William Diamond S Drum The Beginning Of The War Of The American Revolution

/;/ the a stir chill of an early April morn-
ing in /77j...

Captitin John Parker, commanding
the Lexington mimitemen, directed his
drummer boy to go across the road to
the Common and beat the call to arms.
And <u)hen William Diamond, bringing
the enthusiasm of his sixteen years to the
heating of bis gaily emblazoned druni^
rolled out the call to the village's mimite-
nien, the War of the -American Revolu-
tion began. ,. : . #f . :

1 ; ' i" "tf-;*5,

William Diamond's Dr^

BY ARTHUR BERNON TOURTELLOT

A straggling handfulperhaps forty in
allof Massachusetts farmers answered
the call of William Diamond's drum.
Some of them were experienced fighters,
veterans of the bloody French and
Indians Wars, well versed in guerrilla
tactics and undercover fighting. But
they were no match for the seven hun-
dred gleaming, handsomely uniformed
British regulars bearing down on the
small green meadow known as Lexing-
ton Common. The minutemen's historic
stand against the cream of General
Gage's Boston occupation army has be-
come a legend, the subject of innumer-
able songs and poemsan American
"Thermopylae." What happened that
April morning on Lexington Common
and, a few hours later, at Concord Bridge
and the dramatic events which preceded
and followed the two battlcs-iall this is
revealed in Arthur Bernon Tourtellot's
fully documented, fascinating history.

(Continued on back flap)

KANSAS Cjl^lMbliLiC LIBRARY

001 D11M75 3

973 33 T73w 61-12685

Tourcellotj Arthur Bemon

William Diamond's drum; the
beginning of the War of the

973^33

Towtellot, Arthur Bemon .
William Diamond's drum; "&he
bediming of the War of the
American Revolution. Garden
C3tv, N.Y., Doo.bl.eday, 1959.

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

DATfc. DUE

- -J--

ARTHUR BERNON
TOURTELLOT

WILLIAM
DRUM

The Beginning of the War
of the American Revolution

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC., GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

CARTOGRAPHY BY RAFAEL PALACIOS

Copyright 1959 by Arthur Bernon Tourtellot
All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America

FOR

Jonathan Bernon

AND

Christopher Trayne

6112685

Contents

PREFACE 13

PROLOGUE THE BEAT OF THE DRUM 15

1 CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON 25

2 THE VISITORS 53

3 THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS 81

4 THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON 119

5 THE BATTLE: CONCORD 145

6 THE BATTLE: RETREAT 169

7 THE USES OF ADVERSITY 205

8 BIRTH OF AN ARMY 243

NOTES 271

BIBLIOGRAPHY 285

INDEX 303

Illustrations

FOLLOWING PAGE

1. Silhouette of Jonas Clarke 62

2. Portrait of Samuel Adams 62

3. Portrait of John Hancock 62

4. Portrait of Paul Revere 62

5. Portrait of General Thomas Gage 124

6. Portrait of Major Pitcairn 124

7. Doolittle print: the Battle at Lexington Common 124

8. Doolittle print: the British army in the center

of Concord 124

9 . Doolittle print : the Battle of North Bridge

in Concord J 88

i o. Portrait of Lord Percy 1 88

1 1 . Doolittle print : the meeting of Percy's forces

with Smith's at Lexington 1 88

1 2 . Portrait of Dr. Warren 1 88

1 3. Salem Gazette broadside, dramatizing the Battle

of Lexington 250

9

ILLUSTRATIONS

14. Portrait of John Adams 250

15. Cartoon broadside, "The Retreat," published

in London 250

1 6. Print of Boston Common 250

10

Maps

1 . The routes of Revere, Dawes,

and Dr. Prescott Front End Sheet

2. The route of the British on the night Facing Page
of April 1 8th from Boston to Concord 48

3. The Battle of Lexington Common 96

4. The battle in Concord at the bridge 216

5. The route of the British relief force under Percy

on the morning of April i gth 2 64

6. The retreat to Boston Back End Sheet

Preface

Every student of the beginnings of hostilities in the War of the
American Revolution must acknowledge the extraordinarily per-
ceptive work of the late Allen French of Concord and the sharply
speculative essays of the late Harold Murdock, read before the
Massachusetts Historical Society and the Colonial Society. In the
case of this book, I owe a more special debt to each.

Mr. French completed his invaluable inquiries into the events
of April nineteenth, 1775, some thirty-three years ago, before all
the documentary evidence was known, and concentrated there-
after on his major work. The First Year of the American Revo-
lution, which does not treat of Lexington and Concord. However,
he was later the first American scholar to make a careful examina-
tion of the papers of General Thomas Gage, acquired by William
L. Clements and now at the University of Michigan; his comments
in the informal report, General Gage's Informers^ are still a pro-
vocative guide to later inquirers. Mr. French's wise scholarship
was equaled by his generosity. Shortly after I had dealt, necessarily
briefly, with the opening of the Revolution in The Charles, he
offered to lend me his copious factual notes for use in my further
investigations into the happenings of April nineteenth.

The incongruity of the decision made in the early morning on
Lexington Common was first noted, incidentally and with his char-
acteristic wit, by Mr. Murdock in a paper called "Historic Doubts
on the Battle at Lexington," read before the Massachusetts His-
torical Society. It was this passing reflection that led me to a re-

PREFACE

examination of the evidence resulting in the hypothesis presented in
this book. His further speculations on Earl Percy's retreat, read
before the Colonial Society, contained many suggestions and
some determined investigations of alleged atrocities of great value
to my consideration of the battle reports as propaganda.

For copies of primary source documents and illustrations, I am
indebted to Miss Helen M. Brown. Copies of the silhouette of
Jonas Clarke and the portrait of Lord Percy, photographed by
Mr. Henry Jackson, were furnished through the courtesy of Mrs.
Robert C. Merriam, curator of the Lexington Historical Society,
which also owns the miniature of Major Pitcairn. The Doolittle
prints of Lexington Common and of the British officers on the ridge
in Concord are used through the courtesy of the Connecticut His-
torical Society. The Doolittle prints of Earl Percy in Lexington
and of North Bridge, Concord, are reproduced through the
courtesy of the Albany Institute of History and Art. The Gage
portrait is in the collection of Colonel R. V. C. Bodley in Boston.
The portraits of Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, John
Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren are owned by the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston. The broadside is reproduced through the
courtesy of the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts. The British
cartoon is reproduced through the courtesy of the John Carter
Brown Library in Providence, which owns the original. The view
of Boston Common is from a print in the Phelps Stokes Collection,
New York Public Library, after an original water-color drawing
by Christian Remick, dated 1768, in the Concord Antiquarian
Society.

Arthur Bernon Tourtellot

Wilton, Connecticut
January 14, 1959

14

PROLOGUE

THE BEAT OF THE DRUM

cc . . . and having met at the place of our
company's parade., [we] were dismissed by our
captain, John Parker, for the present, with orders
to be ready to attend at the beat of the drum."

DEPOSITION OF NATHANIEL MULLIKEN

AND OTHERS 1

In the clear chill of an early April morning in 1775, twenty-one
companies of picked British soldiers grenadiers, the tallest, most
heavily armed of infantrymen, traditionally the first to attack,
and light infantry, the agile flanking troops of the regiments
marched out from Boston across the softly rolling countryside of
Middlesex.

After a restless night of alarms, counsels, musters and dis-
missals of militia, mysterious couriers, intelligence and counter-
intelligence, a forty-five-year-old veteran of Rogers' Rangers in
the French and Indian wars, Captain John Parker, commanding
the Lexington minutemen, directed his drummer boy to go across
the road to the Common and beat the call to arms. And when
William Diamond, bringing the enthusiasm of his sixteen years to
the beating of his gaily emblazoned drum, rolled out the call to the
village's minutemen, the War of the American Revolution began.

Everyone, including Captain Parker, knew where the British

PROLOGUE

were headed: Concord, five miles to the west. To get there, the
British regulars had to march right into Lexington's Common, a
two-acre triangular patch that divided the road into two branches.

As William Diamond continued to beat the call on his drum,
the Lexington minutemen perhaps thirty of them assembled on
the Common. Captain Parker directed Orderly Sergeant William
Munroe to form the men in ranks.

Eventually Captain Parker had thirty-eight men strung out
thinly in one line and in part of a second. "I was stationed about
in the centre of the company," said Sylvanus Wood. "While we
were standing, I left my place and went from one end of the
company to the other, and counted every man who was paraded,
and the whole number was thirty-eight and no more." 2

The rolling beat of William Diamond's drum began to drown
out, in the ears of the approaching British, the soft thud of their
own marching feet on the unpaved roadway. Aware that the drum
was sounding a military assembly, the British officers halted their
troops, the light infantry in front and the grenadiers in the rear.
Orders were given to stop, prime and load their guns, double their
ranks, and then to proceed again at double-quick time.

All the elements of an inevitable, if ludicrously one-sided, battle
were now present in almost geometric simplicity: a little band of
armed yeomen, their number perhaps swelled into the forties now,
stood in one and a half straggly rows, their guns primed and
loaded; up the road, headed toward them on the double, came
several hundred soldiers, their guns also primed and loaded.

Now this was an odd situation, a suicidal situation, for Captain
Parker and his minutemen all of them hard and practical men
to get themselves into.

First of all, the British threat in itself did not call for a
Thermopylaean stand. The British soldiers represented about one
sixth of the strength of General Gage's peacetime occupation army
garrisoned in Boston. The little army had been stationed there for
nearly a full year all through the summer of 1774 and the re-

PROLOGUE

markably mild winter of 1774-75; in all that time they had
molested no one, destroyed no property. Except for the kind of
minor and isolated encounters common between townspeople and
the military in garrison towns a taunting remark, a drunken
argument, a dispute over a woman the occupation was wholly
peaceful. Occasionally, during the year, battalions were marched
out of Boston into the surrounding country for exercise and then,
without incident, returned again. "The people swear at us some-
times," one colonel wrote, "but that does us no harm." 3 General
Gage himself was probably the most peaceable occupying general
in all history. He had thus far proved much more irritating to his
own people than to the Americans, annoying his government at
home by his passiveness and his soldiers by such unwarlike restric-
tions as banning the wearing of sidearms on the streets of Boston.
Nicknamed "Old Woman" by his officers and men, he was dubbed
"The Mild General" by George III. And now he had sent the
flower of his regiments across Middlesex for the not very bellicose
purpose of seizing some powder stored at Concord and that was
all. This Captain Parker knew, the colonials having already dis-
patched warnings to the Concord militia to hide the stores. More-
over, the British march from Boston to Lexington, three quarters
of the way to Concord, had been accomplished without the de-
struction of any property or harm to any person.

Would Captain Parker, then, have seen this situation as one
requiring a suicidal stand by his little company on the Common?
The only American general who commanded later that day did not
think so : "This company continuing to stand so near to the road,
after they had certain notice of the advancing of the British in
force, was but a too much braving of danger; for they were sure to
meet with insult or injury, which they could not repel. Bravery,
when called to action, should always take the strong ground on the
basis of reason." 4

Secondly, Captain Parker was not a man to have ordered a little
group to expose itself directly and foolishly to enemy fire. He was a

PROLOGUE

man of maturity, well read, sensible; a working farmer attuned to
realities; a father, wholly supporting a wife and seven small chil-
dren; in his youth an experienced fighter in all kinds of wilderness
battles during the French and Indian wars, well practiced in the
tactics of concealment and guerrilla warfare. No local military
martinet throwing his weight around, he was elected as their
captain by the minutemen themselves, who chose him over men
who had been older in service and higher in rank during the
earlier wars. He obviously had qualities of sense and judgment
that attracted the respect of his townsmen. He simply would not
have made, for any military reasons, the decision to line up his
slender company in the very path of British troops outnumbering
him nearly twenty to one. If he knew the approximate strength of
the British, any such military decision would have been criminally
stupid and incredibly irresponsible. And Captain Parker did know
that, even if he had got his whole company on the Common, they
would be outnumbered by at least seven to one. Indeed, if any-
thing the strength of the British marching forces had been over-
estimated in Lexington that night, having been placed at twelve
or fifteen hundred men by intelligence received five hours earlier. 5
If Captain Parker had had it in mind to challenge such a force,
he knew how to do it. Before the road from Boston leveled out to
a straight stretch before Lexington Common, it passed between
two wooded hills. In ten minutes Captain Parker could have had
his militia out of range and out of sight of the British raining
bullets down on the heads of the enemy. Instead, he lined them up,
hopelessly ineffective, on the Common. This decision must have
been made, therefore, for other than military reasons, or it must
have been made by someone else.

Thirdly, the Lexington minutemen were not inexperienced
youngsters. The oldest was sixty-three, a veteran of Louisburg in
1758 and the Indian uprisings of 1762, an officer of the company
and unquestionably consulted by Parker. Two others were also in
their sixties; four in their fifties; eight in their forties. Of the

22

PROLOGUE

seventy-seven, fifty-five were over thirty, and over twenty of them
had served in the French and Indian wars. Democratic in their
organization and simple and direct in their relationship with one
another, the minutemen would obviously have counseled with
their elected leader during the three hours between the first alarm
and the fatal muster on the Common. In fact. Captain Parker,
in a deposition given six days later, said that they did : ". . . in
the Morning, about One of the Clock . . . ordered our militia to
meet on the Common . . . to consult what to do, and concluded
not to be discovered, nor meddle or make with said Regular
Troops." 6 Thus, the company participated in the decision.

The decision made at the first alarm, three hours before
William Diamond was ordered to beat his drum and the minute-
men to stand like tenpins in open sight on the Common, visible
for a thousand yards up the road was "not to be discovered."
It was a sensible decision, one to be expected of a man of Parker's
character and experience and of the clearheaded fanners and
craftsmen of his company. But sometime between one-thirty and
four-thirty, it was abandoned. Parker lined his men up in the rising
daylight on the clear green of the Common where discovery was
certain, and he began a war that ended seven years later with an
effect on human history more lasting and more penetrating than
any that had gone before.

7

CAPTAIN PARKER'S
LEXINGTON

"The men who fell on this green > under the
shadow of the village church . , . were men born
and reared here,, taught at the village school and
from the village pulpit . . "

RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 1

The little group that Captain Parker mustered on Lexington
Common before daybreak on April nineteenth, 1775, had some
of the characteristics of a family reunion. At least a quarter of
those present were his own relatives or those of his wife cousins,
nephews, brothers-in-law. Among the oldest was a first cousin of
the captain, a fiercely determined grandfather, Jonas Parker,
there with his son, Jonas, Junior; and among the youngest was
the captain's widowed sister-in-law's son, the sixteen-year-old fif er,
Jonathan Harrington. There were nine Harringtons, seven
Munroes, four Parkers, three Tidds, three Lockes, and three
Reeds. These six families furnished twenty-nine of the seventy-
seven minutemen who answered William Diamond's drum call.

This was as Captain Parker would have expected. His Lexington
was a little village, sprawled out over nineteen square miles and
inhabited by a little more than a hundred families. Since im-
migration had virtually stopped with the French wars of the

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

seventeen-fifties, the population of the town, changed only by the
births and deaths of the inhabitants, stayed unaccustomedly stable
during the last half of the eighteenth century. In 1775 there were
seven hundred and fifty people in the town men, women and
children, five slaves and four hundred cows. The town consisted
topographically of about ten thousand acres of fertile fields, very
gentle hills, and occasional woodlands, sometimes broken by slight
greenstone formations, patches of peat bog, or scores of little
streams that eventually found the Charles or Mystic rivers to
empty into the sea fourteen miles away.

Lexington's weather was varied, the arrival and duration of the
seasons uncertain. In the little burying ground north of the
Common are the cryptic evidences of long and bitter winters. But
the winter of 1774-75 was so mild and short that old men, always
particularly concerned with such things, noted it in their diaries;
and in the parish register there were listed only a half dozen
funerals. Lexington had also known long, warm summers, and yet
almost all these were marred and heavy with epidemic deaths of
children and young adults, probably from typhoid. All this bred
a people who had learned to accept and yet to go on, and if all
these vital records show anything beyond statistics it is that here
were a brave people who had a kind of sturdy gallantry and who
triumphed over all the successions of losses they suffered. This
perhaps as much as anything made equalitarians of them, al-
though there was a somewhat special position occupied by the
schoolteacher and by the two physicians, Dr. Joseph Fiske (whose
father practiced in Lexington before him) and his son. Dr. Joseph,
Junior, who was to go away as a surgeon in the Continental
Army.

By American standards Captain Parker's Lexington was an old
town, many of its families having lived there, some in the same
houses, for five or six generations. Captain Parker's mother's
family, the Stones, had been in Lexington for four generations,
the Parkers for three, but both families had been in Massachusetts

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

since 1635, when the Bay Colony was only five years old. Every
decade since the 16405 the town of Lexington had grown by
perhaps a hundred people. Every decade a little more of the
woodlands was cleared, and the broad meadows cultivated, and
the rich peat swamps used. Most of the settlers, of course, came
from the seaside port towns and were turning away from the
mercantile or fishing life for the ways of the farmer, turning away
from the sea to the land. For over a century now they had
worked hard and prospered. They had built themselves houses of
remarkably simple and enduring dignity and married among
themselves so that almost all the families were in one way or
another interrelated. The town burying ground was, to a consider-
able extent, a family graveyard, with all its stark headstones, with
their fatalistic legends, tracing the marriages among the families
of the town.

The gravestones told, too, of the flinty theology to which John
Parker's forebears had subscribed back in the early days, when
the cold persistent spirit of John Calvin hung like a pall over the
town and filled it with a grim preoccupation with the eternal
damnation of all but the elect. The craggy dogma of the Bible
state, however, began to wane long before Lexington was a century
old, John Parker's generation grew up with considerable reserva-
tions about the doctrine of the elect. Gradually, the people of
Lexington became a pragmatic people, unsuited to the preservation
of the Puritanism of the i6oos, and without making any great
issue of it shook off the more styptic elements of the old faith while
such of its last defenders as Cotton Mather were wallowing in their
own absurdities.

Meanwhile, the patchwork of small but productive farms that
were stretched across the town of Lexington began to be less iso-
lated from one another, less wholly independent. A village life and
a village character started to emerge. With others of the town
Captain Parker's great-grandfather, Samuel Stone, subscribed in
1 7 1 1 to a fund to purchase an acre and a half of land where the

W|LLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Concord, Bedford, and Boston roads met, to be owned in common
by all the people of the town. Even then the Common was the
center of village life. Muzzy's Tavern (later Buckman's), having
been licensed as a public house since 1693, stood directly across
the road from it. The Reverend John Hancock's parsonage stood
up the road a few hundred yards. Conspicuously adjacent to the
Common was the old meetinghouse, built in 1692, which func-
tioned also as a town hall, an armory, an assembly place, and
sometimes as a schoolhouse. In 1714 a new and larger meeting-
house was built on the Common, a great bamlike structure with
two tiers of galleries and the main floor made up of high-walled
pews carefully sold, in the order of the desirability of their location,
to members with "respect first for age, second for real and personal
estate, third to have respect to but one head in the family." John
Parker's grandfather was granted "the second seat" unmistak-
able sign of a solid citizen. The next year, 1715, they built a
schoolhouse on the Common, behind the meetinghouse some dis-
tance. There from October to March each year, a fireplace
blazing at one end of the one room, the Lexington children were
instructed by a succession of underpaid Harvard graduates, who
courted the minister's daughters and most of whom later entered
the ministry themselves. The people of the town also built stocks
on their Common to punish malefactors, including common scolds,
dug a well to water the schoolchildren and "the town people on
Sabbath days," and erected a stubby belfry to house a five-
hundred-pound bell, given to the bell-less town by John Parker's
cousin, Isaac Stone. But by fax the most powerful influence on the
Common, as John Parker was growing up, was the outpouring
of the voice of the Reverend John Hancock, for over half a century
the pastor of the Lexington church.

From the tall pulpit of the newer meetinghouse Hancock dis-
pensed a liberal and cheerful theology to the generations of
Parker's parents, his contemporaries, their children, and some of
their grandchildren. They listened also as he guided them through

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

many of their temporal affairs. He was known to settle land dis-
putes by driving a stake in the ground and simply telling the
disputants that that was the boundary and there would be no
further argument about it. And he moved swiftly to deter his
parish from having elders a variety of lay deputy clergy, usually
of a meddling and troublesome nature by stating flatly that the
duty of the older elder would be to accompany the pastor on all
out-of-town trips and pay all expenses and that of the younger
elder would be to brush down and harness the pastor's horse when
he required it.

Witty, respected, an entirely new type of native American clergy,
who saw the death of the old Puritan theocracy with relief and
apparently with some delight, old "Bishop" Hancock awakened
on a cold December night in 1752 with an acute stomach-ache
and died promptly, at the age of eighty-two, without inconven-
iencing even Dr. Fiske up the road at the next house. John Hancock
left his mark on Lexington. At the time of his death, the parish at
Lexington was sixty years old, and he had ministered to it for
fifty-four of them. He brought its people out of the melancholy
hopelessness of predestination, through the "new lightism" that
split many of the Massachusetts churches in half as they strained
at theological gnats; and, by his wise, good-humored interven-
tion from time to time, he accustomed the townspeople to the
role of the clergyman as a dominant voice in temporal affairs on
the somewhat novel grounds that he might be a rational mind
worth listening to instead of a priestly authority they could not
avoid. This last may well have been his most significant achieve-
ment.

By the time of Hancock's death, when John Parker was twenty-
three, Lexington had acquired its eighteenth-century character
as a quiet, self-contained village that governed itself, elected and
instructed its own representative to the Great and General Court
the colonial legislature of Massachusetts, and prized the royal
charter as the mother country's irrevocable recognition of its basic

33

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

rights and freedoms. During the long, scattered wars with the
French and Indians in the 17405 and 17505, as many as forty of
Lexington's two hundred male adults had fought to defend the
King's realm in North America, at the capture of Louisburg, at
Lake Champlain, and at the fall of Quebec. Several had joined the
hardy corps of Major William Rogers' Rangers; and one of
them, Edmund Munroe, was the regiment's adjutant. Four of the
Parker family, including John, marched off to these wars and
acquired a degree of military confidence and competence that
stayed with them all their days.

From his family experience John Parker also learned something
of political self-determinism. His father, Josiah Parker, was select-
man for twelve years and had served for repeated terms as town
clerk and assessor. His cousin, Jonas Stone, was also a selectman
and later a representative to the General Court and a delegate to
the Provincial Congress. After the fall of Quebec and the inter-
minable French wars drew to their close in the 1 7603, the political
life of the times and, indeed the political objectives of the people
began to take ascendancy over the old religious life and objectives.
The most articulate and influential agent of the transformation in
Lexington was, oddly enough, the extraordinary and persuasive
young pastor who had been called to succeed Hancock, the
Reverend Jonas Clarke.

ii

Three years out of Harvard, Jonas Clarke arrived in Lexington
in the spring of 1755. He was twenty-four years old, unmarried,
large and impressive in appearance, neat to the point of fastid-
iousness in his dress, and more concerned with the practical social
applications of Christianity than with its body of doctrine. Gre-
garious, worldly, of a literary bend, he was a gifted social and
political philosopher, with a strong inclination to logic. He was
one of an entire generation of Harvard men who came under the

34

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

influence of the "gentle, tender, affectionate 352 President Edward
Holyoke, whose attachment to the libertarian principles of John
Locke furnished the rationale of the Massachusetts patriots who
led the revolutionary movement during the cold war that went on
for over a decade before the outbreak of armed hostilities.

Before he accepted their call to Lexington, Jonas Clarke drove
the hard bargain with the town fathers necessary to win their
respect. The parish settled on him an outright payment of 133
and an annual salary of 80 but shrewdly demanded that he quit
forever any "claim, title or interest in or unto any part of the
ministerial land in this town." The ministerial land was a tract
acquired by an assessment of the parishioners for the purpose of
providing revenues for the clergy; the Reverend John Hancock
had had the right to take wood from it for lumber for use on his
own property and for fuel. So Jonas Clarke demanded, and got,
a supply of twenty cords of wood a year in addition to his salary.
However, when the expenses facing the town seemed to Clarke
"not small," he sometimes gave back a part of his salary in gracious
little letters to the moderator at town meetings. An excellent man-
ager of his own affairs, he lived reasonably well, brought up a
family of twelve children, and left his heirs a highly productive
sixty-acre farm.

Clarke was a man of greater and more far-reaching intellect
than John Hancock had been, and he possessed some of the ver-
satility and range of interests that characterized such contempo-
raries as Jefferson and Franklin. He managed his farm with ex-
traordinary skill and kept a systematic 3 almost scientific record
of its production. Something of an experimentalist in the gaunt
liturgy that his sect permitted itself, he abandoned the old New
England psalm singing, threw out the atrocious versifications by
the Harvard divines that had been used for a century, and even
introduced hymn singing in the parish. He was interested in all
the activities in the town, and his house soon became a busy
gathering place for both the townspeople and for visitors from

35

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

other communities. It became clear, within a few years of his
settlement at Lexington, that he would be the greatest single in-
fluence in the town's history,

As the youthful successor to the octogenarian Hancock, Clarke
was a compelling and attractive personality to the young people,
John Parker, for example, was only a year older than the new
pastor and early fell under his influence. He spent hours talking
with the young cleric and always left with his arms loaded with
borrowed books. Parker and his twenty-four-year-old bride, Lydia
Moore, were probably the first couple married during Jonas
Clarke's pastorate. A couple of years later Clarke himself married
Lucy Bowes, daughter of the pastor of the neighboring town of
Bedford and a granddaughter of the Reverend John Hancock,
whose ancient relict still lived in Lexington. Clarke and his young
wife moved into the Hancock house with the matriarch and set
about raising a family, ultimately numbering six girls and seven
boys, all but one of whom lived to adulthood.

By the time John Parker was back from the French and Indian
wars, the Reverend Jonas Clarke was well established as the
leader of affairs in Lexington. Parker's cousin, Jonas Stone, was
elected deacon of the church, and Stone was also the town's
leading politician, being successively assessor, selectman, treasurer,
and delegate to the General Court. In due time Clarke and Stone
became a team, Clarke defining policy and Stone carrying it out.

m

Although the War of the American Revolution began when
Captain John Parker lined up his handful of men on Lexington
Common, the Revolution itself was not a battle of bullets but a
battle of opinion that began in the early iy6os. After the dis-
tractions of the French wars, the British sought to consolidate the
empire by expanding Parliamentary control over the colonies, by
revoking the old charters that virtually gave them home rule, and by
radical alterations in the British tax structure so as to impose

36

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

upon them unfamiliar burdens this last on the general grounds
that the colonies benefited most directly from large proportions
of Great Britain's army and navy expenses. All this constituted
what was essentially a badly needed program of administrative
reform; and if there were any economic wrongs to be redressed
at the time, they were wrongs suffered by England and not by
the colonies. In fact, the failure of the Grenville ministry that
initiated the reforms was not so much due to errors of substance
or even altogether of procedure although errors of the latter
variety came in abundance later; the failure of Grenville was a
total neglect of communications. Under the old patent charters the
colonies had probably the freest form of regional self-government
the world has ever known, before or since. This freedom had bred
in the colonies such a commanding sense of seH-determinism on
most all their affairs that when the administrative reforms enacted
in London found expression in more positive executive actions by
the colonial governors in America, it bore to the colonists a strong
smack of outright tyranny. Moreover, the source of the irritation
lay as much in the sudden enforcement of old laws, particularly
revenue laws, as in the passing of new laws,

There was a general feeling, most acute in the port towns, that
a good and free-trading era was coming to an end. The trading of
the colonial merchants had made them far richer, and at a much
faster pace, than their heavily taxed counterparts in England.
Profits were immense, and taxes and tariffs low and often com-
pletely ignored. At the same time, the security of the colonies was
the responsibility of the British, and whatever freedom there was
on the high seas that fell short of piratical anarchy was safe-
guarded by the British navy. Meanwhile, the long French and
Indian wars had left Britain with a great debt; the far-flung
empire, with its vulnerabilities to France and Spain, involved
heavy military and navy expenses; and there were serious doubts
that domestic revenues, in England could be greatly increased.
Finally, with the major preoccupation of the British on the North

37

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

American continent the boundless, drawn-out conflict with the
French concluded, it was high time that someone tried to bring
about a more efficient management of colonial affairs. For the
truth of the matter was that the British empire as a political entity
had no existence beyond a loose federation, no political philosophy
beyond a theoretic loyalty to the Crown, and no real management
of its colonial interests at all. In fact, several colonial officials had
served out their appointments without ever leaving London a
custom so common that when Grosvenor Bedford was turned out
of his job as Collector of Customs at Philadelphia because he had
lived in London all the twenty-five years that he held the post,
Horace Walpole wrote the Prime Minister, protesting Bedford's
discharge as unjust. As the King's First Minister, George Grenville
could see nothing but disaster ahead if some order were not created
out of the political, administrative, and fiscal chaos of the empire.

But if the realities of the situation were on his side, philosophy
and theory and the intellectual drift of the times were on the side
of the colonists. Indeed, the little village of Lexington in Mas-
sachusetts, its small population supporting itself by consuming and
selling the products of their farms and of their few craft shops,
had little economic stake in the conflict. It had nothing but theory
to justify concerning itself with the growing squabble with Britain.

The custodian of political theory in Lexington was the Reverend
Jonas Clarke. His passion for the subject sprang from many
sources. For one thing, all the theology and ecclesiasticism he had
been through in his young life was tied up inextricably with politics.
For the impact of the covenant, a political contract as well as a
declaration of faith, was a living force in the New England con-
sciousness, which was deeply ingrained with the notion that if
men could bind themselves together to manage their own spiritual
lives they could do the same with regard to their temporal affairs.
When all the Calvinist strictures were wrung out of Puritan
thinking, the one lasting social effect was this overriding tenet of
self-reliance. To Jonas Clarke and the New England clergy, how-

38

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

ever, Puritanism left other legacies. Although the Bible state
of the theocrats was dead by his time, its long shadow was to fall
over his own years and the history of his province far into the
future; and the ministers were all the more jealous of their
positions in their communities when they saw their influence as
priests fading and as political tutors rising. And they still clung to
their roles as magistrates. Offenders in Jonas Clarke's congre-
gation still "stood up in meeting' 5 and recited, to the elevated
delight of their brethren in the endlessly long Sabbath sessions, the
details of their errings. The reliance of Puritanism upon Judaism,
with the authority of the temple and the Mosaic code, had survived
the gradual diminishing of the old association of parish and town
as one entity with two faces.

In contrast to the old Calvinist preachers with their vengeful
Jehovah, Jonas Clarke preached the Christian virtues, but he was
nevertheless fully aware that there was much to be said for the
old emphasis by way of preserving the ministerial authority. Yet
he was realist and social student enough to know that for the future
the strength of the ministry lay in its members being with their
people rather than over them. And if the Anglican clergy derived
strength from associations with royal governors, the nonconform-
ist ministers did from associations with selectmen. Throughout
many New England towns, nevertheless, the waning influence of
the ministers had become a real problem. The reactionary efforts
of Jonathan Edwards had failed signally, and only at Yale College
in Connecticut was there any longer a premium on Calvinist
orthodoxy in New England. The time had long gone when the
Puritan priests could hope that their influence would be restored
by automatic consent that theirs was a mystical authority abso-
lute and pervasive. From the somewhat strained device of the
"halfway covenant" an implement that permitted those who
could show no evidence of the regeneration necessary to full com-
munion to become "half members" of the church, thus preserving
its organizational strength in the face of its waning spiritual

39

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

authority the old ecclesiasticism had never recovered. Since the
halfway covenant permitted the baptizing of the children of half
members, infant baptism had already become an empty formalism;
and with the failure of the short-lived revival movement, the
"Great Awakening/ 3 the churches as a whole had serious likelihood
of going the same way. The alternative, of course, was their be-
coming progressive social forces in a world, not of doctrine, but of
tidal realities. It is not insignificant that, first with John Hancock
and later with Jonas Clarke, this was the road taken by the Church
of Christ in Lexington.

A less subtle and generally less powerful force that tended to
unite the dissenting clergy against the strengthening of ties
with Britain was the abhorrence of an American episcopate. The
Church of England had grown alarmingly in New England during
the eighteenth century, and it had moreover attracted an increas-
ingly impressive following from the upper classes of the larger
towns. Its position throughout the rest of the colonies was, of
course, exceptionally strong. It was the established church in many
places, including the thriving city of New York, and the only
church of any size and influence among the aristocracy of the
South. As the number of Anglican clergy grew and the incon-
venience of a long voyage to London for ordination became more
general, fears mounted in the dissenting minds of the nonconform-
ists that a bishop might be sent to America. The combination of
bishops and royal governors conjured up visions of twin assaults
upon traditional, if in some respects illusory, religious and civil
liberties. And the Puritan clergy knew enough, by way of century-
old experiment of their own, of the grip that combined religious
and civE authority could have on a people. Even though there was
no probability of an American episcopate, the bare possibility
loomed as the final blow to the local power of the nonconformist
clergy in their towns and in the province : ". . every poor parson
whose head has never felt the weight of a bishop's hand will soon

40

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

know the power of his pastoral staff, and the arm of the magistrate
into the bargain." 3

The fears of an episcopate were almost entirely political: the
theological dispute about the practices and doctrines of the Church
of England, including the necessity of bishops to preserve the
apostolic succession, had long since died out from sheer lack of
interest. Neither Jonas Clarke nor his predecessor Hancock showed
much sensitivity to the old doctrinal disputes. Old Hancock had
loved to be called "Bishop" and felt that he was fully entitled to
it, because he had participated in so many ordinations, at one of
which he made the startling suggestion that "He that desires the
office of a bishop desires a good work." 4 And Jonas Clarke felt no
qualms about restoring to the drab Calvinist services some of the
very features of the Anglican liturgy that his forebears had found
so repugnant. 5 But the political fears of the Anglican church were
a different matter; it was enough that the Church of England,
the monarchy and the Parliament were in league. The basic
ingredient of the covenant, on the other hand, was the idea
of the consent of the governed the Puritan church itself holding
that its authority over its members was derived only from their
voluntary compact to submit themselves to its authority.

The extension of the idea of the covenant to all political institu-
tions was not a difficult thing for Jonas Clarke and those of his
generation at Harvard who had been steeped in John Locke and
gone to school to President Holyoke. An enlightened cleric of re-
markable and prophetic political insight, Holyoke was, like Jona-
than Mayhew and Charles Chauncey, an articulate critic of the old
Calvinism and the abortive attempt to revive it in the 1 7405. "In
whatsoever churches of Christ there is made use of external force
and compulsion in these regards, so far they are gone off from the
simplicity that is in Christ . . . The ministers have no right to
impose their interpretations of the laws of Christ upon their
flocks . . . Every man therefore is the judge for him In these
things. . . . 3>e This libertarian theology, which must have had

41

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

the Mathers spinning in their graves, was matched by the presi-
dent's political philosophy. As early as 1736, long before there
was any political conflict with England, President Holyoke had
used language amazingly close to that of the Declaration of In-
dependence forty years later: "All forms of government originate
from the people ... As these forms then have originated from the
people, doubtless they may be changed whensoever the body of
them choose to make such an alteration." 7

In the pulpit of West Church in Boston, Jonathan Mayhew, two
months before his death, paid unabashed tribute to the one love of
a fervid Me: "Having also from my childhood up ... been ed-
ucated to the love of liberty ... I would not I cannot now,
though past middle age relinquish the fair object of my youthful
affection. Liberty, whose charms, instead of decaying with time in
my eyes, have daily captivated more and more." 8

Edward Holyoke's teachings left a permanent impression on
Jonas Clarke, which became clearly visible when Clarke as-
sumed leadership in the town of Lexington's response to the new
British colonial policy. So ingrained was Clarke's idea of political
freedom that Lexington's protest of the first major tax measure
of Parliament, the Stamp Act, disposed of its economic effects in
one vague paragraph and treated, with magnificent reasoning,
its political implications, opening "a door to numberless evils,
which time only can discover," 9 in twelve precise paragraphs that
anticipated by a century such political philosophers as John
Stuart Mill. The Stamp Act, passed by Parliament on Grenville's
recommendation in 1765, was to go into effect one year later. At
the urging of Clarke the town of Lexington voted that its selectmen
write instructions to its representative in the General Court of the
colony for protesting the act. The instructions turned up in Clarke's
handwriting.

Actually, the Stamp Act in itself would have little direct eco-
nomic effect upon a village of small farmers. It was directed
largely at the commercial classes who were most able to pay, and

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

Grenville had thought it to be by far the least obnoxious sort of
tax: "It will fall only on property, will be collected by the fewest
officers . . . does not require any number of officers vested with
extraordinary powers of entering houses. . . ." 10 The Stamp Act
provided for a tax on legal and commercial documents, few of
which ever passed through the hands of a Lexingtonian, and on
printed materials, hardly of decisive economic importance in a
town that had no newspaper or printer. Clarke's concern with
the act was almost entirely with constitutional questions, and the
instructions that he wrote for the selectmen were more suggestive
of a judicial opinion than a material protest, with some obiter dicta
at the outset that appear to have been addressed less to the minister
in London than to the townspeople of Lexington: "We have
always looked upon men as a set of beings naturally free: And it
is a truth, which the history of the ages and the common experience
of mankind have fully confirmed, that a people can never be
divested of those invaluable rights and liberties which are necessary
to the happiness of individuals, to the well-being of communities or
to a well regulated state, but by their own negligence, imprudence,
timidity or rashness. They are seldom lost, but when foolishly for-
feited or tamely resigned. 3 ' 11 Aside from its general validity as
political doctrine, this also served to remind Clarke's townsmen
that, however remote the effects of an individual Parliamentary act
so far as they were concerned, it could establish a precedent, create
a pattern, for the erosion of their fundamental freedoms if they
were not alert in recognizing incursions upon them.

Clarke then proceeded to anatomize the act on constitutional
grounds. It violated the charter, which provided that taxes could
be imposed upon the colony only by its own legislative assembly.
It violated the ancient right of British subjects to be taxed only
with their own consent. It was passed without a hearing, even
though respectful petitions had been prepared and dispatched to
London. It deprived the colonists of trial by jury, by providing
that violators of the act would be tried in admiralty courts before

43

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

judges only. It violated two essential principles of Magna Charta :
indictments by the oath of honest men of one's neighborhood and
trials by one's peers. And it spawned such evils as the inevitable
rise of a class of informers, paid to report violators, and the cutting
off of any means of redress against unjust accusations and convic-
tions.

By his skilled diagnosis of the issues evoked by an act of seem-
ingly little relevance to the lives of the people of his little com-
munity, Jonas Clarke achieved much. He drew the town deeply
and creditably into a great and historic debate. He accustomed it
to the idea and practice of acting on the broad political stage that
extended beyond town affairs. He hit upon an effective and
dramatic method of political education. He shaped attitudes and
molded public opinion by addressing the papers of the town as
much to its own inhabitants as to obnoxious ministers beyond the
seas.

One by one, as Parliament passed new acts affecting the colonies,
the town of Lexington appointed committees to deal with them.
One by one, they were scrutinized by Jonas Clarke in his study
and dissected in long, closely reasoned papers later adopted by
the committees as constituting the opinion of the town which
indeed they did after they had been read, discussed, and endorsed
at the town meetings. In 1768, though not a British soldier had
appeared in Lexington, it was declared that the keeping of a
standing army in the province to enforce the acts of Parliament
was "an infringement of their natural, constitutional and
chartered rights." 12 At the same meeting a Committee of
Correspondence was appointed to work with similar committees
throughout the province, particularly that of Boston. Three of
the five committeemen named were deacons in Jonas Clarke's
church. In 1773, w h ei * Boston resisted the effort to land tea
discriminatively taxed, the inhabitants of Lexington resolved that
anybody in the town who purchased or consumed any tea "shall
be looked upon as an enemy to this town and to this country, and

44

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

shall by this town be treated with neglect and contempt." 13 In
1774, as conditions in Boston worsened with the closing of the
port and the passing of other coercive measures to enforce the acts
of Parliament, although still without any material effect upon
Lexington, the town concluded, under the guidance of Jonas
Clarke, that the time had come to prepare far rebellion.

Revolution in the minds of the people of Lexington had already
been almost fully achieved. The revolt was of a philosophic
nature, skillfully and positively phrased in philosophic terms and
on the whole neither inflammatory nor overly emotional in either
content or language. The public papers of Lexington, tracing the
evolution of the town's opinion, are great state papers, written in
the neat orderly hand of Jonas Clarke; and they paralleled, when
they did not actually anticipate, the great papers of the colonies as
a federation. In the opinion of Lexington there was little doubt
left that Britain by her acts had shattered her own traditions,
dating from the barons at Runnymede, of a free society. In the
Coercive Acts of 1774 (which, in addition to closing the port of
Boston, revoked the Massachusetts charter, transferred trials to
England or to other colonies, and quartered soldiers on the inhab-
itants without their permission) the people of Lexington saw the
revolution as really one launched by the British Parliament
against a wholly British heritage. And in their minds the movement
in the colonies, all their acts and resolves, was a counterrevolution
to restore centuries-old freedoms and safeguards against tyranny.
There was much to be said both historically and logically for this
view, with its striking similarity to the original Puritanic anti-
separatist attitude toward the Church of England. Puritans were
reformers, by nature and conviction, and not revolutionists.

But it was clear to Jonas Clarke and thus to his townsmen, as
events progressed, that no debate of the issues was to lead to any
final solution. The ministry of Lord North was proceeding as if
it had nothing but contempt for colonial opinion and was bankrupt
of any expedient but force. The reaction in Lexington was in-

45

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

evitable. Having already concluded, "We shall be ready to sac-
rifice our estates and everything dear in life, yea and life itself, in
support of the common cause," 14 they voted at last, abandoning
faith in the power of reason for the comfort of practical measures,
to strengthen their arms and militia with "a suitable quantity of
flints . . . two pieces of cannon ... a pair of drums . . . bay-
onets." 15 Then they elected a delegate John Parker's cousin,
Jonas Stone to the First Provincial Congress, an extra-legal
body, formed without authority, after General Gage had canceled
the stated meeting of the General Court, to serve as a forum and
an agency for united action by all the towns of the colony.

iv

Skilled as he was in political theory and in its articulation, the
Reverend Jonas Clarke was also enough of a realist to have known
from the beginning that reason did not always prevail. And though
there was little militancy in Lexington's attitude all during the
war of opinion against Britain, Clarke had carefully laid the
rationale for military preparedness, if it ever became a necessary
or prudent step. As early as 1768 he pointed out significantly that
"where courage, valour or fortitude has reason for its basis," it
enables men "to face the greatest dangers, to stand the severest
shocks, to meet undaunted and serene the charge of the most formi-
dable enemy and all the horrors of war." 16 He counted upon the
men of Lexington, under appropriate guidance, to rise to the
occasion.

The men of Lexington did. There were about a hundred and
seventy males over sixteen in the town, and they organized them-
selves into alarm list, militia, and minutemen.

In the colonies, from the time of the first settlements, all able-
bodied men were required to bear arms. During the seventeenth
century this was such an obvious necessity to guard against ma-
rauding Indians that it was. assumed to be a normal and automatic

CAPTAIN PARKER S LEXINGTON

concomitant of growing up. Ordinarily, the men simply kept a
watchful eye only on their own houses and lands; but they were
organized, with officers commissioned by the King, were required
to stand inspection at least once a year, and were subject to calls
for active duty in expeditionary forces in the Indian wars and later
in the wars with the French. The annual musters became festive
local holidays in the eighteenth century, since every family was
involved. They all came to town from the surrounding country-
side, lined up with their muskets and powder horns, executed some
awkward drills, listened to the pastor preach a sermon, and spent
the rest of the day in eating and drinking. Any efficiency in marks-
manship that they acquired they developed on their own, and as
fighters they were a wholly individualistic breed, not accustomed
to volley firing and used to finding their own vantage points,
selecting their own targets and priming, loading and firing at
their own pace and discretion. The nature of the warfare against
both the Indians and the French in the North American wilderness
encouraged the preservation of such practices even when the
militia was incorporated into the British field armies. For the most
part, when at home the men furnished their own arms and ammu-
nition, and the wearing of uniforms would have struck them as
both unnecessary and of no practical use whatever.

Their officers had been commissioned by the royal governor on
behalf of the crown, but except when the men of the militia were
off to the wars the officers meant nothing to them. Military titles,
therefore, were not scarce in Lexington. John Parker's father was
known as Lieutenant, although his political activities seem to have
been more considerable than his military services. Some of the
officers had participated in the campaigns of the French and
Indian wars and, in addition to being resourceful fighters, had
shown impressive qualities of leadership. The Munroe family
was particularly noted in Lexington for its military achievements
and furnished several officers in the French wars. Edmund Munroe
was adjutant of the regiment in Rogers' Rangers; Robert Munroe

47

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

bore the standard at the capture of Louisburg; and Abraham
Munroe served as a lieutenant.

Whenever it had taken to the field, the Lexington militia had
fought in the service of the King. But when General Gage can-
celed the legislative session of the General Court in the fall of
1774, the militia considered itself dissolved. It was succeeded by
the military organizations set tip by the Committee of Safety on
the recommendation of the Provincial Congress, which by some
legal straining declared itself the lawful successor of the General
Court.

In carrying out the Provincial Congress's aim to create an
armed force outside the jurisdiction of the British authorities,
Lexington and the other towns of Massachusetts took a poll of
their manpower and divided it into two bodies: the alarm lists
and the militia. Somewhat eclectic in its references to old laws, the
Congress concluded that the ancient legislation requiring all able-
bodied men to bear arms gave it sufficient authority for creating
this general pool of manpower. At first the alarm lists consisted of
all men able to move and to assume responsibility. Later only the
older men, young boys, and the less agile were in the alarm lists.
The rest were in the militia, the combat forces. From this an elite
company of the more active men, called minutemen, was formed
to be ready, at a moment's notice, to march on orders of the
Committee of Safety or, in cases of emergency, on those of their
own officers. Meanwhile, the militia was a reserve force, and the
alarm list furnished manpower for watch duty and other chores at
the sound of an alarm. Often, however, they acted simply as
guerrilla fighters whenever they felt like it and unquestionably took
part in the very early fighting of the war.

Captain John Parker's Lexington company of minutemen num-
bered slightly over a hundred men and officers. During the winter
of 1774-75, th 6 towft had acquired powder, musket balls, and
some muskets. William Diamond had learned how to beat the
battle calls on the town's newly purchased drum. The company

48

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

had elected its officers, headed by Captain Parker, "a stout, large-
framed man of medium height. 53 His chief aide, also elected by
the company, was Lieutenant William Tidd, thirty-eight, who was
married to the daughter of Robert Munroe, the old veteran of
the French wars who had carried the standard at Louisburg.
Robert Munroe himself, despite his sixty-three years, was elected
third in command with the title of ensign. The second ensign was
Joseph Simonds, thirty-five, who had served on some of the town
committees that dealt with the oppressive acts of Parliament. All
three of his commissioned officers were kinsmen of Captain Parker,
and so was about one third of his company. The clerk of the
company was Daniel Harrington, whose house faced on the
Common and who, like Lieutenant Tidd, was a son-in-law of old
Ensign Munroe.

Of Captain Parker's non-commissioned officers, Orderly Ser-
geant William Munroe, the young proprietor of Munroe's Tavern
on the road to Cambridge and Boston, was the most enterprising:
he was to have the busiest and most ubiquitous time of all the
military men in Lexington on the night of April eighteenth. He
appears to have felt himself authorized to make decisions inde-
pendently of the commissioned officers. Eventually he became
a colonel, and apparently he well deserved it. There were two
other sergeants of the company: Francis Brown, who was to suc-
ceed Parker as commander of the company, and Ebenezer White,
the tHrty-tibree-year-old father of four children, the youngest of
whom was born the week before the muster of April nineteenth.
Four corporals were also chosen by the company: Joel Viles, the
town's hog reeve; Samuel Sanderson, who was married to one of
the Munroes; John Munroe, the youngest son of the ensign; and
Ebenezer Parker, at twenty-four the youngest of the officers.

Nearly all of Captain Parker's minutemen were farmers, al-
though some of them also practiced trades ^blacksmiths, wheel-
wrights, clockmakers. Among the hundred and four were a dozen
f ather-and-son combinations. There was one slave in the company,

49

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Prince Estabrook, said to have been the son of an African tribal
chief. There were also two men who owned slaves, including
Lieutenant Tidd. Although slavery was dying in Lexington, largely
because it was not hereditary in Massachusetts, it was still not un-
common in 1775. The town had voted in 1728 to give the Rever-
end John Hancock 85 to buy a slave, and Captain Parker's
mother's family were slaveholders. 17 Several slaves, like Prince
Estabrook, served long in the Revolutionary armies, many of them
like him winning their freedom for their service.

In the spring of 1775, Captain Parker had little that he could
do to make a military unit of his company of rninutemen. Spring
had come early to Lexington, and the plowing was already under-
way. This kept the men at home and busy from sunrise to sunset.
There was no guard duty to perform in Lexington, because the
town contained no military stores, had no loyalists or Tories in it,
and was in no danger of riots or internal uprisings. Gunpowder
was in such short supply and used so sparingly that musket practice
was out of the question. And there would have been little purpose
and less grace in Captain Parker's marching his men around the
Common in close-order drill. Consequently, musters of the minute-
men were limited to one or two occasions in the spring, mainly to
see how long it took the minutemen to get to the Common. Once
there they cocked their unloaded muskets, snapped the flintlocks
once or twice, and then adjourned to Buckman's Tavern for some
rum before the trek home again.

The central military problem of the province in the spring of
1775 was not manpower but powder. In the previous September,
General Gage had moved most of the powder stores from Cam-
bridge, where they would have been readily accessible to the
colonists, to the comparative safety of Boston. What the several
towns had already drawn from the stores before Gage got around
to their removal was pitifully small in amount, but enough, it
carefully used, to give the provincial militia some effectiveness. The
amount and distribution of the colonists' supply of powder and

5

CAPTAIN PARKER'S LEXINGTON

arms were reported regularly to Gage by Dr. Benjamin Church,
a member of the Provincial Congress and of its directorate, the
Committee of Safety, who sold the information to finance an
expensive mistress in Boston. Meanwhile, however, the colonists
had been smuggling munitions out of Boston under the very noses
of Gage's troops. They simply loaded the stores into wagons,
covered them with hay or manure, and drove out over the Neck
to the countryside. Church told Gage about this, too, and a stop
was put to it before much had been gained. Powder was still
critically scarce in the provincial towns.

If Captain Parker had any special problem, then, as April came,
it was not with his men, all of whom he knew very well and on
whom he could fully rely. It was gunpowder. However, even this
was of little immediate concern, for, so far as he knew, the
Lexington minutemen were going nowhere. He had received but
one order, dated March 30, 1775, from the only authority behind
the existence of his company, the Provincial Congress, meeting five
miles away in Concord. ". . . whenever the army under com-
mand of General Gage, or any part thereof to the number of five
hundred, shall march out of the town of Boston, with artillery
and baggage, it ought to be deemed a design to carry into execution
by force the late acts of Parliament, the attempting which, by the
resolve of the late honourable Continental Congress, ought to be
opposed; and therefore the military force of the Province ought
to be assembled, and an army of observation immediately formed,
to act solely on the defensive so long as it can be justified on the
principles of reason and self-preservation. . . .' n8

Back on his farm, some two miles from Lexington Common,
Captain Parker went about his main business, preparing the fields
for the spring planting. Jonas Clarke undoubtedly kept him gen-
erally informed on the proceedings at Concord, where the Pro-
vincial Congress remained in session until April fifteenth, discussing
the thorny question of how to get the other colonies to show more

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

spirited resistance to the British and align themselves more actively
with Massachusetts, Captain Parker was to do more to accomplish
this in a few hours than the Provincial Congress was able to
achieve in weeks.

THE VISITORS

"The liberties of all alike are invaded by the
same haughty power."

SAMUEL ADAMS 1

In April 1775 the Reverend Jonas Clarke was forty-four years
old and had been pastor of the Church of Christ in Lexington for
twenty of them. If, in the minds of the sixteen members of the
congregation who had voted against calling him to Lexington,
there had been doubts about the likelihood of his ever filling
adequately the shoes of old Bishop Hancock, they were by now
thoroughly dispelled. Jonas Clarke was in 1775 an impressive
presence indeed. A great man in size with a massive head, he
attired himself in a gown, cassock, and band for his pulpit appear-
ances and wore a huge white wig that gave him a magisterial
aspect. Eloquent and endowed with a voice of thunderous
volume, he could be heard on Sundays across the Common in the
rooms of Buckman's Tavern and in the surrounding meadows.
Although he never ignored his ecclesiastical duties, he had become
more and more immersed in the political conflicts of his time, and
he was a respected confidant of the leaders of the Provincial
Congress.

57

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

The old Hancock house, up the Bedford road a few blocks from
the Common, was no longer dominated by old Mrs. Hancock
who had died in 1 760, three years after Clarke had moved in with
her granddaughter as his bride. It was now dominated by Clarke.
His first son had died in infancy, but ten other children had
followed in good order all of them healthy and active. Every
morning Clarke's voice boomed throughout the house, as he stood
at the foot of the stairs and bellowed, "Polly, Betsey, Lucy, Liddy,
Patty, Sally, Thomas, Jonas, William, Peter get up! 532 Having
organized his populous household and his farm as efficiently as
his parish, he found the time to write prodigiously. In addition to
producing some three thousand sermons, each of an hour's length,
he kept a long and detailed journal and wrote scores of public
papers. He must also have imposed a stern discipline on his host of
children. The Hancock-Clarke house had altogether only eight
rooms, and the children ranged from sixteen years down to five
months in age a fertile situation for the development of complete
chaos if there had been no firm rules.

Clarke also took the leading part in the education of his older
children and helped to prepare some of the Lexington boys for
Harvard. The little school on the Common was temporarily closed
in 1775 for economy reasons, and the town's "women schools,"
which the younger children attended, taught only elementary
reading, writing, and arithmetic. 3 This left the town without a
schoolmaster, a void into which the energetic Clarke willingly
stepped so far as candidates for Harvard went. His house also
contained the town's most extensive library, which he made freely
available to all who wanted to borrow books. Often, the Hancock-
Clarke house's usual population of twelve was swollen to a score
or more by townspeople there on public business or to advance
their learning, political or clerical visitors from Boston or Cam-
bridge, or by Clarke's father and mother, who journeyed the
twenty-five miles from Hopkinton for long visits.

Presiding over the functional aspects of this busy household was

58

THE VISITORS

Clarke's competent wife, Lucy. During an age in which the bury-
ing grounds were full of tiny headstones memorializing the deaths
of small children one of Captain Parker's minutemen, Abijah
Childs, lost six in twelve days Lucy Clarke was to rear twelve
of thirteen. Cooking over the open fires of an incredibly small
fireplace in the great kitchen of the house, she prepared meals for
thirty-six a day, laundered for at least twelve people, made clothes
for most of them, kept the house clean, and, during the long
hours of her husband's writing in his small study off the kitchen,
kept the children quiet.

Into this sufficiently quiet household in the spring of 1775 there
came in pairs a quartet of distinguished visitors, not just to call, but
to live for an unpredictable period. Before they left, there was a
population of twenty in the house and an armed guard of ten
around it. And the home of the Reverend Jonas Clarke, one of
the most persuasive apologists of the Revolution, became a center
of great public affairs, much to the satisfaction of Clarke, who
shortly found himself participating in discussions of the most
critical importance with the political leaders of the province hi
his own study.

To one of the visitors, however strained the circumstances, it
was a homecoming of sorts. John Hancock, thirty-eight, Treasurer
of Harvard College, President of the Provincial Congress, Chair-
man of the Committee of Safety, richest merchant in Boston and
probably the richest man in Massachusetts, was like Jonas
Clarke's wife a grandchild of old Bishop Hancock. Of the
bishop's three sons, two John the second and Ebenezer had
been graduated from Harvard and entered the ministry. Ebenezer
was settled at Lexington as associate of his father, with the promise
of succession on his father's death, according to terms arrived at
after some rather rough bargaining with the parish by the bishop;
but the son died twelve years before his father did, so that it all
went for nothing. The other clerical son, the second Reverend
John Hancock, served three years as librarian of Harvard College

59

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

and then became pastor of the church at Braintree, where the
venerable bishop also made the financial arrangements. Unlike the
Reverend Ebenezer, the Braintree Hancock married, and lie sired
three children, one of whom was John Hancock, the future patriot ;
but like the Reverend Ebenezer, the Reverend John also died before
the bishop, leaving young John orphaned at the age of eight.

The boy was taken in charge by the bishop's third and surviving
son, Thomas Hancock, a childless Boston merchant of immense
wealth and flexible ethics. The Hancock mansion stood on
Beacon Hill overlooking Boston Common., and it was the most
elaborate establishment in Boston, for Thomas Hancock was in-
ordinately fond of extravagant display. Thomas Hancock had left
his father's Lexington parsonage at the age of fourteen to become
apprenticed to a Boston bookbinder and drifted after a while into
the export-import business. Bred to the toughest mercantile prac-
tices of his era, Thomas Hancock was a smuggler, a profiteer who
sold contaminated meat to the army during the French wars, and
a shrewd and merciless destroyer of competition. Although he
amassed enormous riches, there was something missing from his
life the respect of Ms fellows so manifestly enjoyed by his
reverend father and brothers. This Thomas Hancock sought to
achieve by display. His agents in London were instructed to get
him the finest coaches, clothes, house furnishings, and even a coat
of aims all of which ostentation accomplished the exact opposite
of what Thomas Hancock had had in mind and made him a some-
what ridiculous figure. Because he inherited his uncle's egregious
sense of display along with his fortune, young John Hancock was
to be dogged all his days by a total lack of prudence in exhibiting
his wealth.

Young John Hancock was graduated from Harvard, learned
the finer points of the free-booting trading of the eighteenth
century, and basked agreeably in the surface elegance of his
uncle's establishment. He was superficial, impressionable, self-
centered, and always excessively concerned with, whether or not

60

THE VISITORS

other people valued Mm sufficiently highly. During his boyhood he
had made regular visits to his grandfather's Lexington parsonage,
the major part of which had been built by his rich uncle, probably
as a penance but ostensibly as a gift to his father. After the old
bishop's death and while his grandmother was still alive, young
John Hancock made periodic duty pilgrimages to Lexington; but
later he seldom saw the provincial towns. His was the life of a
rich young man in Boston, where he alternated between life in
his uncle's mansion under the watchful eye of his possessive Aunt
Lydia and the waterfront where he kept a middle-aged mistress.
Then, when he was twenty-six, his uncle died and made him heir
designate to a fabulous fortune and the immediate object of the
unshakable matriarchal rule of his aunt, Lydia Henchman
Hancock.

After his uncle's death Hancock, known widely and solely as
Thomas Hancock's favored nephew, sought a character of his own.
Without the acumen and drive of his uncle, he was a man of more
varied endowments, genuinely generous in nature, and of a flexibil-
ity that was often his salvation. Although his intellectual capacity
was limited and his impressionableness almost childish, he was
aware of other worlds than the noisy turmoil of the Boston trading
circles. He started to practice a certain amount of spontaneous
philanthropies, including wholesale relief for the homeless after
the great Boston fire of 1767; the purchase of church pews for
widows ; bells, pulpits, and Bibles for meetinghouses; a collection of
books for Harvard, and a concert hall for Boston. In good time
he became the Treasurer of Harvard College, a trust not conferred
lightly by the canny guardians of the college funds. He also became
captain of the Independent Corps of Cadets, with the rank of
colonel, and thus commanded the honor guard of the royal gover-
nors. This furnished him not only with a title but with an opportu-
nity to indulge his love of elegant dress. He had his tailors in
London devise the most magnificent regimentals the colony had
ever seen, bought new uniforms for the entire corps, and hired

61

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

two master filers to play at drills. For the rest, he managed the
business left him by his uncle with only moderate competence. His
towering vanity brought about recurring breaks with his agents
overseas. His speculations turned out to have none of the diabolic
genius of his late uncle. His interest in commerce kept flagging as
he sought new ways to impress himself upon the people of Boston
as a great man. In this he was more successful than he had been in
the commercial lif e, for public events were on his side and a man
named Samuel Adams could use him.

When John Hancock, at the age of thirty-eight, and Samuel
Adams, fifty-two, presented themselves at Jonas Clarke's house for
their indeterminate stay in March 1775, while the Provincial
Congress met in Concord, they offered a dramatic study in con-
trasts that a decade of working together and occasional squabbles
had not diminished. Hancock was handsome and elegant; Adams
was dumpy and palsied. Hancock was so splendidly attired it took
several trunks to carry his clothes; Adams was so seedy that his
friends had to buy him decent clothes for public appearances.
Hancock was capricious, shortsighted; Adams was clearheaded,
farsighted. Hancock was in vacillating search of fame; Adams was
in consecrated pursuit of a cause. Hancock was the most important
thing in his world; Adams the least in his. With Hancock the
political life was a way to achieve a popularity he desperately
needed; with Adams politics was a means of bringing about the
salvation of the new world. Hancock urbane, vain, shallow,
irresolute, a little frivolous; Adams simple, plodding, astute, de-
termined, somewhat somber. Hancock, the splendid poser; Adams,
the stolid true believer. Hancock, the used; Adams, the user.

When they arrived on Clarke's threshold, the major thing they
had in common was a problem: where did the Revolution still
a revolution of opinion and not of action go from there? The
Provincial Congress was sitting in Concord passing resolutions
and urging actions that had little hope of being carried out
generally in the colony. The Committee of Safety was functioning

62

Jonas Clarke (ij 30 1805), for half a century pastor and first
citizen of Lexington^ was the author of the town's major
political papers from the condemnation of the Stamp Act in
1765 to the condemnation of Jay's Treaty in 1794. LEXINGTON

HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Samuel Adam* (1722-1803) was most effective as an agitator,
kept the Revolutionary spirit alive for a decade before Lex-
ington, after which he steadily declined in influence. He and
Hancock became intensely antagonistic in local politics in
Massachusetts, Adams succeeding Hancock as governor on the
latter's death in 1793, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

John Hancock (IT 36-93) 3 embittered by the choice of Wash-
ington over himself as commander in chief,, was a man of
theatrical vanity and limited intellect. After 1777 he confined
his activities to local politics in Massachusetts, where he refused
as governor to welcome President Washington in ij8<) unless
the President first called on him. Washington sent him a sharp
note which changed his views of protocol MUSEUM OF FINE

ARTS, BOSTON

Paul Revere (1335-1818) was in 7775 a forty-year-old silver-
smith. Employed as a courier for the Boston Committee of Cor-
respondence, Revere was also a self-starting patriot who often
undertook patrolling duties on his own initiative. MUSEUM OF

FINE ARTS, BOSTON

THE VI SITO R S

as a sort of executive cabinet, but It had no real authority or power
except through whatever persuasion it could exercise. There was
not the remotest semblance of a united spirit throughout the
colonies. The First Continental Congress since the Stamp Act
the first united forum of the colonies, which Adams had attended
in Philadelphia six months earlier seemed to him infested with
"half-way patriots" intent on reconciliation with Great Britain,
until he himself, by some masterly strategems, had wrested it
from the control of the "conservatives" ; but the colonies at large
were nevertheless startled by its mildly separatist economic con-
clusions, and there were some wide fears that what the Bostonians
wanted was separation from England so that they could run all the
colonies themselves. Samuel Adams had returned to Boston quite
dissatisfied with the general feeling of the Continental Congress
that by purely economic measures the colonies could bring about a
reversal of British policy.

A mere reversal of British policy was not what interested Adams.
Born into a family of means, Samuel Adams was himself a failure
in commercial life, dissipating his legacy from his father and
making an insoluble mess of his job as tax collector of Boston.
His sole genius was in political manipulation, and he rose to
commanding power during the early days of the struggle with
Britain. He managed to give direction and purpose to popularist
groups in Boston, who had previously just been against the wealthy
classes who were running things. And as the gap between the
colony and Britain widened, he cemented these groups, many
of whom had battled each other literally in the streets of
Boston, into the nucleus of a liberty party. Into them he
had breathed the spirit of revolution. For ten years he had neg-
lected even to support his family in order to labor to keep that
spirit alive, and he had no intention of seeing it puffed out by
the cautions of the first Continental Congress. The economic
paralysis brought about by the Coercive Acts in Boston, the
financial burden of novel taxes, and the other economic troubles

63

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

of the times were to Adams only symptoms of a deeper, more
important rift involving the essentials of political morality. He
was firmly convinced that Great Britain was a depraved society,
corrupt in religion, corrupt in politics, corrupt in values. Unlike
some of his countrymen's, his concept of the issue was never so
particularized that it could be reduced to slogans. Taxation with-
out representation was abhorrent enough to him, but he could
never see it as the crux of the matter, and the cure of colonial rep-
resentation in Parliament never interested him. At Philadelphia
he wrecked completely the scheme of Joseph Galloway, Speaker
of the Pennsylvania Assembly, to establish a kind of domestic
parliament in the colonies that would legislate jointly with the
British Parliament on colonial affairs. Although he bided his
time in announcing it, he was interested only in total, complete
independence.

Fanatic as he undoubtedly was, Samuel Adams was also a
political realist of the keenest insight. He knew a great deal about
men's minds, and he was easily the most gifted man of his times
in understanding and manipulating the group mind. He knew that
when all the oratory was done and all the great thinking expressed,
all that they achieved was the definition of objectives. To achieve
the objectives themselves, it was necessary to consolidate in one
line of action groups that had little in common but could be made
to have a common intent. The accomplishment of this strategy of
revolution was Samuel Adams' single-minded purpose and his
everlasting monument.

ii

In his long and persistent effort Samuel Adams made use of
every person, every prejudice, every element, every fear, and
every aspiration in colonial society. By patient, skillful, strong-
minded, and often ruthless work he finally welded together forces
of such dynamic drive that it is difficult to believe that any of his

64

THE VISITORS

contemporaries fully understood them. Into these forces he drew
the young merchant prince John Hancock at an early date, en-
couraging and flattering him when it was desirable and cracking
down heavily on him when it was necessary, but always using
him. To Hancock it was enough that he was becoming more than
a merchant: he was becoming a statesman in time of crisis.

Up until the March meeting of the Provincial Congress in
Concord, to which Adams and Hancock were commuting from
Jonas Clarke's house, the road to revolution had been full of
barriers, bumps and detours. Hancock was so uncertain that at
times he gravitated toward the Tories, and he could never get
over a feeling of awe toward royal governors. But Adams always
got him back on the road again and finally down it so far that
there could be no turning back. By 1775 he was the only man
singled out by the ministry in London as the equal of Samuel
Adams in obnoxiousness, and Gage had been sent orders to arrest
both Hancock and Adams.

To Adams the distinction was hard-won. A decade, sometimes
turbulent and sometimes so somnolent that only Adams seemed to
care, had gone by since Samuel Adams first came into alliance with
any considerable groups in Boston on the passage of the Stamp
Act, and from then on he never let the issues evoked by the act
lapse from public awareness for a moment even though at times
there were few listening. Elected to the General Court during the
economic uneasiness of 1765, he put little faith in the slow, legis-
lative route to political reform. When a Continental Congress
was proposed in 1774, he said that "from the length of time it
will take to bring it to pass, I fear it cannot answer for the present
emergency." 4 He saw his seat in the General Court as useful
chiefly as a spot from which to hurl harpoons at the royal governor.
He put far greater faith in the Boston mobs, who were ever ready
to attack authority, colonial as well as royal. Adams, in bringing
the mobs together, gave them a sense of responsible and creditable
purpose and saw to it that they concentrated on such worth-

65

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

while objectives as the new "stamp masters 5 ' and resident officers
of the crown. It is no exaggeration to say that Adams' mobs
nullified the Stamp Act by scaring the stamp masters out of town.
He then blandly announced in the General Court that obviously
the life of Boston could not come to a halt just because there was
no one around to furnish the stamped papers for legal and com-
mercial documents; so the British Parliament repealed the act as
unenforceable.

Adams had hit upon a technique of dramatic violence that he
never abandoned. He used it again and again, always at an op-
portune time and always with masterful effect not least of which
was the mobs' inciting the British troops to fire on a group of
mobsters in 1770, creating the long politically useful Boston
Massacre. Although Samuel Adams' cousin, John Adams, the
most disciplined of the minds of the period, could not stomach that
episode and served as defense counsel for the soldiers, the Boston
Massacre was the longest lived myth in American history. More-
over, it gave a fiery emotional content to a dispute that had until
then been economic and theoretic. Its anniversary was observed
in skillfully stage-managed ceremonies, which took broad liberties
with the facts, in churches and assembly places of the colony for a
decade until independence was won. Throughout the immediate
pre-Revolutionary period, Boston was indeed virtually controlled
by the mobs. And the mobs were controlled by Samuel Adams. He
understood their members as individuals, and he had mastered the
strange alchemy by which the mob becomes both more and less
than the sum of the individuals.

As Adams took the low road to political leadership, Hancock,
whose business interests were having a hard enough time without
tax innovations, took the high road. He was elected to the General
Court, too, and Samuel Adams, recognizing him as an ideal symbol
of respectability and broad commercial interests to identify with
the revolutionary movement, got him introduced to the mobs and
lionized by the two leading mobs, once deadly rivals, at a peace

66

THE VISITORS

feast, for which Hancock paid the bill. Hancock, in turn, got
Adams a reprieve on the old default charge that had hung over
him since he left the collectorship some 8000 in arrears on his
accounts, saving him from almost certain imprisonment. During
the long struggles over all the issues., from the oppressive taxes to
the quartering d troops, Hancock and Adams supplemented one
another admirably. The outward and visible implications of Han-
cock's association with the revolutionary faction were of inestima-
ble importance merely on the surface; for while Samuel Adams
and his old associates had nothing to lose by the revolutionary
path on which they were set, John Hancock had tremendous
assets and interests to lose and nothing predictable to gain. At
the same time, the essential differences in character and values
of the two men repeatedly boiled to an explosive point, and more
than once Hancock was almost sent flying into the arms of
the Tories, to whose company he was more attracted socially
anyhow. Hancock was extremely sensitive about his personal
status before the public, and Adams did not think that
anything, including reasonable political behavior, let alone per-
sonal position, was as important as the cause. On the whole, there-
fore, while Adams labored at every conceivable task, some risky,
some grueling, all demanding of ingenuity and energy, Hancock
became the well-bred front man. But whenever Adams seemed
to be going too far, to be bordering on treason, Hancock pulled
back and even engineered the defeat of some of Adams' projects.
For long periods, too, Hancock walked a middle path between
Adams at one extreme and the royal governor at the other. Never-
theless, whenever a real crisis arose, he was back with Adams again.
The plans of Adams could easily accommodate the temporary
deflections of Hancock. In fact, it is probable that if Adams did not
encourage such occasional deflections, he welcomed them as con-
veying to the public generally that Hancock was no man's creature.
His greatest use of Hancock was to present him, at suitable times
and in suitable posts, as the well-dressed, polished, substantial

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

gentleman that stood as a living answer to the charges, not so
much in England as in the colonies, that the revolutionary move-
ment was the irresponsible work of mobs. Meanwhile, Adams had
other work to do. He forged the dissenting clergy, for example,
into a powerfully influential revolutionary warhead by constantly
identifying religious rights with political rights and by repeated
reminders of the continuing threat of an American episcopacy.
Among less individualistic classes than the clergy, Adams created
and put into operation the first political machines known in
America, which became both central agencies of action and in-
credibly efficient and rapid sources and channels of intelligence.
He also devised techniques for influencing public opinion that still
seemed innovations when used nearly two centuries later. Not the
least effective of these were the communications from the colonial
assemblies to British officials, drafts of which often appeared in
American newspapers weeks before they had a chance of reaching
the designated recipients. James Otis once protested this practice
to Adams, who snapped, "What signifies that? You know it was
designed for the people and not the Minister." 5 He thought, too,
of the need to influence British opinion, long before he ever had
any hopes of armed revolt, and he made certain that every action
of the ministry was balanced by an unmistakable exposition of the
American point of view to Englishmen. In 1768, Adams invented
the American newspaper syndicate, for he was convinced that the
best and most effective way of mobilizing the sympathy of other
colonies for the plight of Boston in being occupied by British troops
was by reporting to them in detail what it was like for a free town
to be occupied. Distributed to newspapers all the way to South
Carolina, the column, "Boston Journal of Occurrences," reported
in considerably exaggerated news items how the townspeople
suffered from the troops all to suggest that this could also happen
to Philadelphia or Baltimore, Richmond or Charleston.

Yet despite his vast skill and undoubted genius in molding
public opinion and in mobilizing group action, Adams had much

68

THE VI SITORS

too sound a sense of history not to know that the whole revolution-
ary movement was at the mercy of events. In the past, as in the
case of the Boston Massacre, he had occasionally inspired the
event. In his almost religious fervor for the cause, he saw this
as nothing more than the acceleration of historic trends that were
inevitable. He had also seen fit, from time to time, to meet events
halfway, as he did in the case of the Boston Tea Party, when he
abruptly terminated a public meeting to deal with the tea issue
by stating flatly that "this meeting can do nothing further to save
the country" upon which his mob of Mohawks took off to throw
the disputed tea into the harbor. In the shrewd judgment of
Samuel Adams such stimulation of events was, from time to
time, a necessary element in the strategy of revolution. Another
such time was approaching when he came with Hancock to Jonas
Clarke's house.

The long dispute with Great Britain had brought the situation,
by the spring of 1775, to a tense stalemate. Everyone knew that
it could not continue indefinitely, but it was by no means assumed
that it would inevitably culminate in armed revolt. As punishment
for the destruction of the tea shipments the Boston Port Bill had
closed the port of Boston tight. Parliament had sought to make
violation of its laws unpopular in the colonies by making an ex-
ample of Massachusetts. It rushed through a petulant and highly
impolitic assortment of acts to put teeth in its tax measures. Among
these were acts prohibiting the calling of any town meetings except
to elect officers and transferring to the Crown the appointment
of all local law-enforcement officials. Since May 1774, General
Gage, with his five thousand bored troops, had occupied Boston
to enforce the acts; and all commerce in the town was suspended.
Samuel Adams spent the year trying to keep the spirit of revolution
alive, to unite the colonies, and to create an American army that
would absorb the various militia. Despite his distrust of the slow
legislative process, the Provincial Congress was the agency that
he expected to accomplish these things within Massachusetts, and

69

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

the Continental Congress within the colonies as a whole. But he
was well aware that these bodies, with their constant need for
compromise, might require an occasional goading. Adams had had
enough experience with them to know that they were less apt
to rise to greatness than to have greatness thrust upon them. After
the lukewarm session of the First Continental Congress he used
every means, fair or foul, to broaden and intensify a sense of
urgency.

Adams had got Hancock installed as President of the Provincial
Congress and as chairman of the Committee of Safety, but he
seemed unwilling to let him out of his sight. With Adams firmly
in charge Hancock was enjoying hugely the sensation of a leader-
ship that he did not have. Both men were, of course, the sole
exemptions in a general offer of pardon that was made by the
British in an effort to break the Boston stalemate. Hancock wore
the honor in his usual theatrical way, strapping on his colonel's
sword as though ready to duel with any soldier who came to get
him. But Adams had no dramatic illusions about it; he knew very
well that a country parsonage would be an unseemly and a very
unpopular object of a military raid and that Gage was not likely
to try it.

For his part, Adams could see the stalemate's breaking in either
of two ways: reconciliation with Britain, with the colonies, chas-
tened but given relief, remaining in the empire; or outright and
complete separation, won by forcibly throwing the British out. He
could see the former as nothing but total defeat and the moral
collapse of the colonies. The latter he saw as possible only if all
the colonies were united in such furious indignation by a dramatic
event that they would never be reconciled. Unprepared and almost
barren of ammunition as the colonies were, Adams nevertheless
feared the war far less than a drift toward reconciliation. The
North ministry, despite the warlike aspect of Gage's Boston army,
had spent the winter of 1774-75 holding out olive branches to the
other colonies. Adams knew that there were economic, social, and

70

THE VISITORS

political pressures within the colonies that made it not at all unlikely
that in due time they might be seized by eager colonial hands.
Moreover, he was fully aware that many of the influential colonies
outside New England, and some factions within, found the pros-
pect of government by Sam Adams no more palatable than gov-
ernment by British Tories.

Adams unquestionably found Jonas Clarke a sympathetic and
wise counselor on these matters. During his prolonged stay at
Clarke's house, conversations far into the night could enlighten
Adams on the attitudes of the Lexington farmers. Expert as he
was in town mobs and their behavior, Adams, who had lived all
his life in the heart of Boston, was weak in his knowledge of
country people. Hancock knew nothing of them. On the other
hand, Clarke knew them intimately, had taught them all the
politics that they knew, and had written their official town cor-
respondence and resolutions for them all through the dispute with
Britain. Nobody could give Adams a more reliable appraisal of
the capacity and willingness of the country people to resist any
coercion from Gage. Moreover, Samuel Adams was a dourly
religious man, a profound believer in the force and sanctity of
the covenant, and it would be only from such a man as Jonas
Clarke that he would willingly seek guidance.

From March twenty-second to the end of the month, the Pro-
vincial Congress in the Concord meetinghouse held rather pointless
and long-winded discussions on "the rules and regulations for a
constitutional army." But there was no "constitutional army/'
This fondest dream of Samuel Adams had got nowhere at the
Continental Congress five months earlier, and the Congress had
also made it perfectly clear that the majority of the delegates
wanted no war of aggression against the British troops in Boston.
So there was no army and little broad sentiment in favor of one.
Even the little town militia surrounding Boston a quarter of
whose number were enrolled as minutemen were inadequately
supplied, uncertain of what they were supposed to do, and not very

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

well drilled. And the session of the Provincial Congress at Concord
was sagging badly, with several members not even bothering to
attend and others going home before the session was over. There
was also bad news from other towns. The Tories of Marblehead,
north of Boston, and of Marshfield, south, had applied to General
Gage for British troops to come to their towns to ensure order.
The troops had gone and stayed there, and nothing happened no
brush with the townspeople, no clash with the local militia, not
even bitter resolutions. To Samuel Adams, such serenity meant
trouble to the cause.

Adams tried at the Concord sessions to rouse the delegates to
the establishment of a provincial army of eighteen thousand men,
outnumbering Gage's troops over four to one, but the cautious
country delegates were not swarming to the support of the notion.
They gave reasons that Adams considered inadequate, such as
the exorbitant costs involved or the danger of British reprisals;
or else, as Adams pressed the matter, they simply suffered sudden
diplomatic illnesses and went home. As the sessions droned on,
the number of delegates attending had so dwindled that Adams
made a motion that all sick delegates resign and more vigorous
substitutes be sent in their places. This made any further sick
reports too brazen to be tried, but the session had accomplished
nothing concrete and was shrinking to a halfhearted end.

In a desperate, and characteristic, effort to redeem it, Adams
seized upon some intelligence received from Dr. Joseph Warren,
a member of the Congress and also of the Committee of Safety,
who had been left in Boston to take charge of affairs during
Adams' absence. Dr. Warren had news to report from Arthur
Lee, the colony's agent in London. Lee's letter was over three
months old when it got to Boston, having come on a slow winter
passage, and it did not have much of importance to communicate
anyhow. But it was enough, under Adams' skillful use, to stir up
the delegates and shake them from their deadly apathy. It reported
that Parliament had resolved to support the Crown fully in the

THE VISITORS

effort to maintain authority over the American colonies (which
was hardly exceptionally grave news, since the Parliament had
been rather more fretful in determining a policy for America than
the King had) ; that henceforth rebellious Massachusetts was
prohibited equal access with His Majesty's loyal subjects in Can-
ada to the great fisheries; and finally that General Gage, who had
been asking for reinforcements for months, would at last get them.
Adams leaped eagerly upon all this intelligence as the salvation
of the tepid session. A proclamation, full of mystery, immediately
went out from Hancock, as President, to the recalcitrant delegates :

In Provincial Congress, April $ y 1775

Whereas several members of this congress are now absent by leave
of the congress, and as the important intelligence received by the
last vessels from Great Britain renders it necessary that every
member attend his duty,

RESOLVED, that the absent members be directed forthwith to attend
in this place, that so the wisdom of the province may be collected^

The strategem worked, and the absent delegates came rushing
back to Concord, their illnesses all providentially cured. But
the only business that they transacted was an attempt to strengthen
steps already taken but never wholeheartedly carried out through-
out the province. On April seventh the Congress prepared a cir-
cular urging that the towns of eastern Massachusetts make certain
that their militia were ready in case of need for emergency action.
It also enjoined them from taking any action except defensively
which hardly seems to have been necessary except for the delegates'
hearty respect for Samuel Adams' ability to create crises. On
April eighth a resolution was passed to send delegates to Connecti-
cut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire to solicit participation in
raising a provincial army. On April thirteenth it was resolved to
create six companies of artillery, though there were neither field
pieces to arm them nor money to pay them. On Saturday, April

73

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

fifteenth, having exhausted the list of actions even remotely pos-
sible to achieve, the Provincial Congress proclaimed a date for
fasting and prayer and then adjourned.

All this flurry of activity with which Adams sought to rescue the
session from characterization as a failure did not erase from his own
mind the fact that the people of the colonies were generally far
from being in a hostile mood. They were not even convinced that it
was necessary to be watchful or prepared. Of the 21,000 the
Provincial Congress had requested for munitions six months
earlier, less than a quarter had been received. The militia were
still without bayonets and armed for the most part only with
their own hunting muskets. They did not have enough field pieces
even to train the militia in their use, and they also lacked such
ordinary equipment as spades, pick axes, wheelbarrows, and mess
gear. The Committee of Supplies was instructed to correct the
situation but given no suggestions on how to do it. Finally, even
after Adams 3 effort to scare the Provincial Congress into venture-
some action with the news from London, there was still in-
difference and a lack of concern among the delegates. When Dr.
Church, attending the Congress, sent his espionage report to Gage
on the last day of the session, he reported, "There was great divi-
sion among the members of the Congress and great irresolution
shown in the course of their debates this week. Many of them
opposed raising an army and though it was motioned to take under
consideration the appointment of officers for said army they would
not enter upon it at all. The Committee on the State of the Prov-
ince have now under consideration the means of procuring a fund
for the subsistence of the army but find so many insurmountable
difficulties that they can come to no determination." 7

There was no doubt that the third week of April 1775 saw the
revolutionary movement at a very low ebb, Adams, who had
been through thick times and through thin in his crusade, saw no
chance of any considerable improvement until the people's mood

74

THE VISITORS

was changed from apathy to mlHtance. No resolution, no speeches,
could accomplish this. It would have to depend upon events.

The Concord session over, Adams and Hancock concluded that,
in view of the repeated assurances from London that Gage was
now under orders to arrest them as ringleaders and send them to
England for trial, they had better stay in the sanctuary of Clarke's
house until they set out for the meetings of the Second Continental
Congress in Philadelphia a week later. The major thing on Adams'
mind was how to inspire action in that fledging quasi-national
body when the Provincial Congress had just fallen so flat. By any
means, the impotent and irresolute wranglings of the First Con-
tinental Congress, the memory of which after six months still
gnawed at his own crusading spirit, must be avoided. Meanwhile,
in the Reverend Jonas Clarke he found congenial, informed, and
sympathetic company. Hancock had other matters to occupy him.

iii

On April seventh, a week before the Provincial Congress ad-
journed. Dr. Joseph Warren's brother James reported on affairs
in Boston to his wife Mercy : "The inhabitants of Boston are on the
move. H. and A. [Hancock and Adams] go no more into that
garrison. The female connections of the first come out early this
morning. . . ." 8

The females connected with Hancock were his Aunt Lydia and
her protegee, his fiancee, Dorothy Quincy. They headed, fully
equipped for an indefinite stay, for the house of Jonas Clarke in
Lexington, and there they had been installed comfortably, if not
with the luxury they were accustomed to, while Hancock and
Adams were winding up the business of the Congress and waiting
to go on to Philadelphia. It was probably Aunt Lydia who decided
on the Lexington retreat with a fine indifference to what must
have begun to be an acute space problem in the little house. She
was determined that her late husband's nephew and heir was to
marry her own favorite niece. But Dorothy Quincy, whose family

75

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

connections were more distinguished than the Hancocks' and who
was popular, self-confident, and somewhat spiritedly independent,
enjoyed giving Hancock, ten years her senior, an uneven time of
it. Aunt Lydia thought that the more the two were together the
sooner their marriage could come about, and the last major busi-
ness of her life would be done. She had no intention of letting
wars or rumors of wars interfere with this serious matter. She
and Dorothy were given the big upstairs bedroom in the Clarke
house, close to the big bedroom occupied by Hancock and Adams.
Aunt Lydia probably took over as much of the management of
the house as she could, for distinguished patriots from out of town
kept coming to the house for dinner.

Among these was one of Hancock's ghost writers (Samuel
Adams was the other) , Dr. Samuel Cooper, militant and politically
minded pastor of the Brattle Street Church, who had written
Hancock's most famous oration, the 1774 anniversary speech on
the Boston Massacre. Cooper, whose church in Boston was at-
tended regularly by Adams, was the clerical firebrand of the
revolution and a kind of chaplain at many of Adams' meetings
with the mob leaders during the early days. It is written 9 that the
Sunday before his visit to Lexington "Dr. Cooper, a notorious
rebel, was officiating at his meetinghouse, and, on notice given
him, protested sudden sickness, went home, and sent to another
clergyman to do his duty in the evening. He, with every other chief
of the [revolutionary] faction, left Boston before night and never
returned to it. The cause, at the time unknown, was discovered on
the fourteenth of said month [April], when a vessel arrived with
Government dispatches, which contained direction to seize the
persons of certain notorious rebels. It was too late. They had re-
ceived timely notice of their danger, and were fled."

Cooper, Clarke, and Adams, drawing Hancock into the dis-
cussions so much as the attention required by Dorothy Quincy's
presence allowed, had ample opportunity to discuss possible
courses of action. It was still certain that public opinion would not

THE VISITORS

tolerate any aggressive attack on the troops in Boston, even if an
army could be improvised for the purpose. And Adams had all
Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth to consult with Clarke.

In addition to paying some attention to his fiancee and his aunt,
Hancock had other matters on his mind as well. He had brought
his secretary, John Lowell, to Lexington with him, and lodged
him with a trunkful of papers to be attended to in Buckman's
Tavern, a few minutes 5 walk from the Clarke house. Among the
papers was a disturbing letter from President Langdon of Harvard.
It reminded Hancock that the Corporation had written him four
times since November 1774 for a statement of his accounts as
treasurer of the College, that he had twice made appointments for
meetings to present them and had failed to appear on both oc-
casions, that the College couldn't very well function without its
funds, and, finally, that the Corporation would now like him to
turn over the money, bonds, and papers that he held for the
College since he was obviously too busy with more pressing
matters to handle them. Hancock wrote a steaming letter back,
saying that he resented the Corporation's action and that he would
do something about the College's funds that he was holding when
he got back from Philadelphia. But he was so furious with Harvard
that he never did give the College its funds (his estate did after
his death), and he waited eleven years before he gave it even an
accounting. Although his business affairs were muddled that
April and the Boston port closing had left him somewhat short of
cash, if Hancock had used Harvard's funds, he had probably done
so mistakenly. Embezzlement is much less likely to be the explana-
tion of his behavior than wounded feelings at the Corporation's
request for its own moneys, for there was never a day hi John
Hancock's life when his assets were as low as his pride was
sensitive.

On Sunday the sixteenth there was further excitement at the
Clarke house, which by now was the busiest place in Massa-

77

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

chusetts. Paul Revere, a Boston craftsman who had long been the
most trusted messenger of the Boston Committee of Correspond-
ence, rode the sixteen miles from Boston with urgent news: there
were unusual and highly suspicious movements of the British
troops within the Boston garrison. Revere had joined with some
thirty other Boston mechanics in setting up a voluntary, self-
appointed patrol to watch the troops around the clock. "In the
winter, towards the spring," he later wrote, "we frequently took
turns, two and two, to watch the soldiers, by patrolling the streets
all night. The Saturday night preceding the nineteenth of April,
about twelve o'clock at night, the boats belonging to the transports
were all launched and carried under the stems of the men-of-war.
(They had previously been hauled up and repaired.) We likewise
found that the grenadiers and light infantry had all been taken off
duty. From these movements, we suspected something serious was
to be transacted. 5510

Revere first took this intelligence to Dr. Warren, who seems to
have adopted Revere as a chief aide. They decided that the intent
of Gage was probably to use the transports 5 boats to ferry the
grenadiers and light infantry across the Charles and out to the
countryside on a raid of the colony's military stores, or to seize
Adams and Hancock (for which the number of troops would
appear excessive), or to do both. They then agreed that on the
next day, Sunday, Revere had better ride out to Lexington and
take his report directly to the Clarke house.

For Revere, who had been employed by the Boston selectmen
to ride all the way to New York with news of the Boston Tea
Party, the chore was a routine one. The ride was so uneventful
that he recalled nothing of it in later years. But to Adams the
news that he brought was far from routine. The month of April
that had opened so dull showed promise of delivering the kind of
events that Adams and the cause so badly needed.

The obvious decision of Gage to make some sort, any sort, of a
move was to Adams the beginning of the real dawn of a new era.

78

THE VISITORS

Repeatedly he had been held back, the whole revolutionary move-
ment stranded, by the faint of heart who were always qualifying
and undermining plans for action with such phrases as "defensive
moves only" and "in the event that Gage's troops with artillery
and baggage move out of Boston. 3 ' Now let them move. Samuel
Adams had sublime confidence, amply justified, in his ability to
make events work for him and to manage the effect that they had
on men's minds. Here, with the news that Revere brought, then,
was nothing but opportunity.

Consulting with Hancock, he first got out of the way the details
that had to be handled before he could contemplate further the
grander implications of the intelligence from Revere. As chairman
of the Provincial Committee of Safety, Hancock sent orders by
messenger to Concord, five miles away, to direct the local com-
mittee to hide the arms, munitions and supplies in widely scattered
places throughout the town and to move what they could to other
towns in the area. Additional messengers were dispatched to other
communities to give advance warning to the minutemen that they
might soon be called upon to live up to their names. A special
meeting of the Committee of Safety was also called for the next
day, Monday.

And now Samuel Adams could ponder the suddenly bright
turn in the prospects of the revolutionary movement, so lately
almost dead of inertia. There could be no doubt that the British
were about to make an excursion in force out into the countryside.
As a result, anything could happen. Adams saw all history, all
wars, all politics as simply action and reaction. He was reasonably
certain now of getting from the British the kind of action needed
by the cause. His only remaining concern was to get the right kind
of reaction from the colonists. He had two days to think about this,
in the company of the most influential man in Lexington, the
Reverend Jonas Clarke, and at a place not more than a few rods
from the parade ground of the Lexington militia.

79

3
THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

ffl

'We rid down towards Lexington^ a pretty
smart pace. . . ."

PAUL REVERE

If Samuel Adams had problems in the spring of 1775, his arch-
foe. General Thomas Gage, "Captain-General and Governor-in-
Chief 3 of Massachusetts, had even more. Adams' illegal govern-
ment, the Provincial Congress, was ineffective enough, but Gage's
legal government in Boston was merely a ghost, governing no one
but the occupation troops. His effective command also extended
to the loyalists who had moved into Boston, but the towns outside
paid no attention whatsoever to his government. He had no
legislature, the General Court having changed itself into the
Provincial Congress, and no courts, for the royally appointed
judges were afraid to hold sessions. Most of the clergy refused
to read his proclamations, and most of the inhabitants ignored
them.

During the winter of 1774-75, Gage could please no one. The
Tories and his own troops thought him so mild in his government
that they openly ridiculed him. The patriots thought him a mon-

85

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

ster, up to the work of the devil, and beneath contempt. Actually,
Gage was a man of exceptional patience and strong democratic
instincts, of noble lineage, married to an American wife, and of
far less rigidity than the average military man. Altogether, in the
Boston of 1 775 he was, in an impossible and, in some respects, a silly
situation. He was not ruling Boston with an iron hand, although
with over four thousand well-armed troops in the little peninsular
town of seventeen thousand and with men-of-war in the harbor
capable of blasting it from three sides, he could easily have imposed
martial law. Instead, he permitted perfect freedom. He let the
radical press insult him unmercifully, permitted public meetings to
be held for the sole purpose of inspiring opposition to his govern-
ment, and so often took the side of the townspeople in their run-ins
with the soldiers that one of his officers complained that, while
the townspeople were never blamed for offenses against the troops,
"if a soldier errs in the least, who is more ready to complain than
Tommy?" 2 He imposed no censorship, no curfews, no regulations
impeding the personal liberties of the inhabitants.

His reasons for the restraint he showed were sensible: "I have
been at pains to prevent anything of consequence taking its rise
from trifles and idle quarrels, and when the cause of Boston became
the general concern of America, endeavoured so to manage that
Administration might have an opening to negotiate if anything
conciliatory should present itself or be in a condition to prosecute
their plans with greater advantage. 3 ' 3 Moreover, he put little faith
in the ability of four thousand troops to put down any determined
rebellion in any case: "If force is to be used at length, it must be
a considerable one, and foreign troops must be hired, for to begin
with small numbers will encourage resistance, and not terrify; and
will in the end cost more blood and treasure. An army on such a
service should be large enough to make considerable detachments
to disarm and take in the counties, procure forage carriages, etc.,
and keep up communications, without which little progress could
be made in a country where all are enemies." 4

86

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

Throughout the winter of 1774-75, Gage presided with flexibil-
ity and prudence over a highly incendiary set of circumstances.
The Port Bill had thrown almost all the laborers in what was
entirely a shipping town out of their jobs, on the one side. On the
other, there were four thousand soldiers with virtually nothing
to do. That the idlers and the soldiers did not have a major
conflict was as much tribute to Gage as an administrator as
some of Ms later military ventures were a rebuke to him as a gen-
eral. In the spring, however. Gage, who was far less militant than
the Boston Tories would have liked, began to receive rumbles of
dissatisfaction with his command in London. On April sixteenth he
received a letter from Dartmouth, the Secretary of State, in which
the earl cast doubt, in no very uncertain terms, on the wisdom of
Gage's general course. He told Gage that the King and his
ministers wanted action, particularly in the form of the arrest of
the leaders of the Provincial Congress who, at the time of Gage's
receipt of Dartmouth's letter, were sitting in Jonas Clarke's study
in Lexington. The earl rejected Gage's sound judgment that four
thousand troops could never subdue the colonies and added that
the prospects of Gage's getting an army that he considered
adequate for such a job were so dim as to be out of the question.
Dartmouth went on, comfortable in the certainty of his knowledge
of affairs three thousand miles away, that Gage had been alto-
gether too lenient anyhow and concluded with ministerial sarcasm,
"In reviewing the charter for the government of the province of
Massachusetts Bay, I observe that there is a clause that empowers
the governor to use and exercise the law-martial in times of actual
war, invasion or rebellion." 5

Gage got this long and reproachful letter from the Secretary of
State on April sixteenth, four months after it was dispatched on
a sloop of war. This was the day after he had Dr. Church's final
summary of the session of the Provincial Congress and a detailed
report of the distribution of the military stores at Concord. Despite
Dartmouth's order to put top priority on the seizure of the leaders

87

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

of the Congress an idea that Gage apparently recognized as
outrageous, and that would furnish the one certain incentive for a
provincial attack on the troops in Boston Gage determined that
the one thing that his troops could accomplish was the destruction
of the few central depots of colonial military supplies. He had
exact intelligence on the volume and location of these supplies
from Dr. Church, and he had further intelligence that specified
what stores were in what places. He also had Church's reports
on the difficulty the Congress had encountered in trying to raise a
provincial army. Nothing that Dartmouth said in his scolding
letter to Gage struck the latter as sufficient grounds for changing his
plans to seize the Concord stores in favor of seizing Hancock and
Adams. He knew where the stores were. He knew the provincial
militia were weakly organized. And he probably had the usual field
general's contempt for the omniscience and bland assumptions of
government ministers who sat thousands of miles away.

It was a sound enough decision for Gage to make: armies
without ammunition were powerless; political leaders always had
successors lurking in the background ready to make capital of
their martyrdom. That Gage seriously considered seizing the stores
at Concord long before he received Dartmouth's letter on April
sixteenth is clear not only from his ordering the boats out the
night before but also from his instructions almost a month earlier
to Ensign Henry de Berniere of the Tenth Infantry: "The
twentieth of March Captain Brown and myself received orders to
set out for Concord, and examine the road and situation of the
town; and also to get what information we could relative to what
quantity of artillery and provisions . . . The town of Concord lies
between hills that command it entirely; there is a river runs through
it, with two bridges over it; in summer it runs pretty dry; the
town is large and covers a great tract of ground, but the houses are
not close together but generally in little groups. We were informed
they had fourteen pieces of cannon (ten iron and four brass) and
two cohorns; they were mounted, but in so bad a manner that

88

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

they could not elevate them more than they were, that Is,
they were fixed to one elevation; their iron cannon they kept in a
house in town, their brass they had concealed in some place behind
the town in a wood. They had also a store of flour, fish, salt and
rice; and a magazine of powder and cartridges. . . ," 6

Although Gage had already received the information on the
military stores, he obviously sent Brown and de Bemiere to get the
report of infantry officers on the conditions of the roads. Gage
also knew, from another letter from his informer, dated April
eighteenth, that many of the munitions stores had been moved
following Revere's Sunday trip to Lexington, some of them out
of Concord altogether but most of them to new places in the town,
and that the provisions for the projected provincial army were still
in their original places.

The first overt action of Gage the launching of the boats from
the transports came on the night of Saturday, April fifteenth,
the same day that he issued the general orders relieving the light
infantry and grenadiers from their regular duties. He told no one
his purpose in issuing the orders not even the man he had chosen
to command the force. But just as Revere and Warren had
guessed what he had in mind and brought about the hurried
shuffling of the stores in Concord, so did Gage's own officers. In
his journal for the fifteenth, Lieutenant Barker, who never ap-
proved of anything that General Gage, or for that matter any of
his senior officers, did, wrote: "General orders. 'The grenadiers
and light infantry in order to learn grenadiers' exercise and new
evolutions are to be off all duties until further notice. 9 This, I
suppose, is by way of a blind. I dare say they have something for
them to do." 7 How a man of Gage's military experience could
assume that there would be nothing transparent in the orders,
particularly when issued the same day that the boats were being
readied on the Charles, is baffling. But it was characteristic of a
kind of operational impracticality from which Gage suffered
grievously as a field officer. Over and over again his military

89

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

actions fell far short of his perception and judgment. On March
fifth he had written to Dartmouth that much was to be feared
from the provincial militia's "forming ambushments, whereby
the light infantry must suffer extremely in penetrating the
countryside/' 8 Yet on April eighteenth he was preparing to send
the best units in his army, amounting to perhaps a sixth of its total
strength, to run just such a gantlet.

Still confident that his intentions were a total secret. Gage stuck
resolutely to his policy of secrecy even throughout the day of April
eighteenth, the day the expedition was to leave. Lieutenant
Colonel Francis Smith of the Tenth Infantry was summoned by
Gage, told that he was to command the expedition but not where
it was going, and then given sealed orders to be opened only when
he was on the way that night. At eight o'clock in the evening the
regimental officers were called to Gage's headquarters and told
to have their companies of grenadiers and light infantry "on the
beach near the magazine guard exactly at 10 o'clock this night," 9
according to Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie of the Royal Welch
Fusiliers. Mackenzie added that quiet was emphasized and the
men were to be marched in small groups to the rendezvous, which
was at the foot of Boston Common on the Back Bay. The regi-
mental officers were told nothing of the purpose or the ultimate
destination of the troops. Shortly before ten o'clock the men were
awakened by their sergeants' shaking them, stole silently out of
their barracks by back doors, and inarched in total silence in little
groups to the obscure beach on the Back Bay a tidal flood com-
pletely barren of any buildings or people. "A dog, happening to
bark, was run through by a bayonet." 10

By nine o'clock on the evening of April eighteenth, then.
Lieutenant Colonel Smith knew that he was going to lead an ex-
pedition but did not know where. The regimental officers knew
that they were supposed to have their grenadiers and light infantry
companies on the beach by ten o'clock. But the soldiers them-
selves had not yet been wakened. At nine o'clock Gage sent for his

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

brigadier, Hugh, Earl Percy, and told him that he was sending an
expedition to Concord to seize the stores. He said, further, that it
was still a secret, even to Lieutenant Colonel Smith, who was to
command. Lord Percy left in a little while and walked across
Boston Common back to his own quarters. He noticed a group of
townspeople talking in a huddle and, concealing his identity by
his cloak in the total darkness, overheard them discussing a British
march that night. They mentioned the arms stored at Concord as
the specific objective, and Percy turned around and went back to
report the incident to Gage. By then the troops were presumably
embarked across the river, and all Gage could do was to issue
orders that no townspeople were to leave Boston that night.

ii

The only patriot leader left in Boston on the night of April eight-
eenth, Dr. Joseph Warren had a busy time while all this stealthy
mobilization of the British was going on, In the afternoon in-
formation started to flow into his surgery: the British were to
march that night. Virtually all the information originated with
British officers, for, careful as Gage was to conceal the destination
and objective of the march, he all but published the fact that
some march was intended. So all during the afternoon the gossipy
little town, where all normal business had ceased, fairly bristled
with rumors not just a grapevine but a jungle web of information
that kept meeting itself. A British officer told a gunsmith; the
gunsmith told Colonel Josiah Waters, a member of the local
Committee of Safety; Waters, of course, told Dr. Warren. At the
same time, one John Ballard heard a Province House groom dis-
cussing the news in a stable; Ballard told William Dawes, an
energetic cordwainer, who had recently endeared himself to Dr.
Warren by smuggling two cannon out of Boston; Dawes told
Paul Revere, "who told him he had already heard it from two
other persons." 11

9 1

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

As the afternoon wore on and long before Gage told even Lord
Percy, Ms brigadier, the plan of the night. Revere and Dawes had
all their own plans made for getting the word to Lexington and
Concord they were certain that Adams and Hancock at Lexing-
ton or the stores at Concord must be the objectives of any major
British move. The only thing that they were unsure of was the line
of the march the troops would take (the boats in the Charles could
have been a feint) and the time of their departure. In those days
Boston was connected to the mainland only by a thin isthmus
called Boston Neck. The troops could march out across the Neck,
although somewhat conspicuously, and thence in a great arc all
around the Back Bay or else westward through Watertown to
Waltham and then north to Lexington and Concord. Or else they
could be ferried across the Charles in boats, landed in East Cam-
bridge and then march in almost a straight line -through Cam-
bridge to Menotomy (now Arlington) to Lexington. The "sea"
route was about sixteen miles to Concord and the land route was
over twenty-one miles. All the evidence thus far known to Warren
suggested that Gage planned to ferry the troops across the river.
But Warren had also had information about Gage's scouting party
of Captain Brown and Ensign de Bemiere and their visit to Con-
cord of a few weeks earlier. He knew that they had gone out the
longer "land" route and come home the shorter "sea" route,
obviously to give Gage road reports on both routes. Revere had
also anticipated that the actual route taken by the British would not
be known until the last minute. Accordingly, on his way back
from his intelligence ride to Lexington the previous Sunday, he
had stopped at Charlestown, across the Charles from Boston,
and arranged a signal code with Colonel Conant of the Charles-
town Committee of Safety that "if the British went out by water,
to show two lanterns in the North Church steeple; and if by land,
one as a signal, for we were apprehensive it would be difficult to
cross the Charles River or get over Boston Neck." 12 Between them,
however, Revere and Dawes managed to do both.

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

Dawes left by land as soon as Dr. Warren got word, in the early
night, that the troops were being marched in small groups down to
the shore on the Back Bay. His instructions were to go to Clarke's
house in Lexington and tell Adams and Hancock that the British
were on the way. Although Gage always had a guard at the only
entrance and exit to the town on the narrow Neck, it was not
particularly efficient. Dawes, who was of a humorous and genial
temperament, had often delighted in seeing how often he could
pass in and out of the town without being stopped. He sometimes
disguised himself as a country produce peddler and once spent all
day posing as a drunk following British officers around and con-
tinuing to follow them as they marched past the guard on the Neck.
Dawes had also invented a smuggling strategem, a buttons game,
for getting contraband gold coins out of the town to his family in
Worcester. In an age when everyone wore brass or gilt buttons he
made himself conspicuous by wearing cloth-covered buttons on
both his coat and waistcoat. When he was accepted for this pecu-
liarity, he put gold coins inside the cloth buttons and wore the
contraband out of Boston to Worcester, where his wife removed
the gold coins and replaced them with ordinary button molds.
Dawes had also, from the beginning, taken the precaution of
befriending any of the guards at the Neck who looked approach-
able. On the night of the eighteenth he had the good fortune to find
one of his friends on duty. He was too discreet and too disinclined
to presume upon the friendship to ask the guard to open the gate.
But when the guard had to open it anyhow for a squad of
soldiers on routine patrol, Dawes had his chance: "attending
their motions apparently as a spectator, [he] was allowed by the
connivance of the guard at the gate, who was privately friendly
to him, to pass out with them." 18

Paul Revere, meanwhile, had a more complicated exit from the
town and a less casual one. First of all, he was well known to the
British as a patriot express rider. Secondly, he had to get across
the Charles River in the shadow of a British man-of-war just as

93

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

the British troops would be crossing. And finally, unbeknown to
him. Gage had that afternoon posted mounted officers, with their
sidearms concealed as though they were on pleasure jaunts, along
the Cambridge roads, just in case messengers should try to give out
alarms that night. It was ten o'clock the rendezvous hour of the
troops on the beach when Dr. Warren sent for Revere. As in the
case of his instructions to Dawes, Warren's concern was with
Hancock and Adams at Clarke's house in Lexington and not with
the supplies at Concord: "I would immediately set off for Lexing-
ton where Messrs. Hancock and Adams were, and acquaint them
of the movement and that it was thought they were the objects." 14
(In his deposition, however, Revere mentioned the stores at Con-
cord as also a possible objective. )

In accordance with- his Sunday agreement with Conant in
Charlestown, Revere stopped long enough to get the sexton of the
North Church to go up and display the lanterns for a long enough
time perhaps a couple of minutes to be seen by Conant across
the Charles but not long enough to attract British attention to
them as a signal. Revere then went to get two friends to act
as oarsmen to row him across the river, on the bank of which he
had long been accustomed to keeping a boat. They proceeded to
cross the Charles downstream some distance from the troops'
rendezvous and separated from them by the Somerset man-of-war.
They muffled the oars and stayed seaward of the Somerset, well out
of sight of the British troops and hopefully also beyond sight or
hearing of the man-of-war. "It was then young flood, the ship
was winding, and the moon was rising." 15

Having concluded what should have been the most difficult part
of his mission, Revere walked from the Charlestown shore into
town, where he met Colonel Conant, Richard Devens, a member of
Hancock's Committee of Safety, and a few others. They had seen
the signal lanterns in the North Church steeple, and Devens had
already sent an express rider to warn Adams and Hancock. Devens
told Revere that on his way home from a meeting of the Committee

94

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

of Safety in Menotomy he had met several British officers riding
out on the Lexington road. Some of them apparently had inter-
cepted Devens 3 messenger, for he was never heard of again that
night. Revere borrowed a horse u a very good horse, 3 ' he said
from Deacon John Larkin, who was never to see it again, and
started off to Lexington, it now being close to eleven o'clock. By
the route he was taking, it was about eleven miles to Lexington a
ride, on a fast horse, of well under an hour.

At Charlestown, Revere met two British officers on horseback.
They had been in the shade of a tree, out of the moonlight, and by
the time Revere saw them he was so close to them that he could see
their holsters in the soft light. When they saw him, they separated,
one coming toward him and the other racing up the road to stop
him there in case he eluded the first. Revere stopped, turned, and
hurried back to the intersection he had just passed, where the roads
to Cambridge and Medf ord forked to the west and north. Having
originally taken the Cambridge road, Revere now turned up the
Medford road. One of the officers, following him and seeing
his intention, took his horse across a field to cut Revere off on the
Medford road. The officer rode right into a clay pond, where his
horse became mired in the oozy bottom, and Revere got away. The
other officer followed him about three hundred yards but gave up
when his horse was evidently being outdistanced by Deacon
Larkin's fast runner. The incident added some mileage to Revere's
course, however, because instead of going directly to Lexington
through Cambridge he now had to take a long swing to the north
around Cambridge. As long as he was in Medford, he stopped at
the house of the captain of the Medford miautemen and gave him
the news. He got back on the main road from Boston to Lexington
beyond Cambridge. On this road Dawes, having taken the long
road out over the Neck, would also be riding. Revere, despite the
detour, got there first, and not long after midnight he was riding
past Lexington Common to Jonas Clarke's house.

95

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

111

Besides the dozen or so British officers. Revere, Dawes, such
other horsemen as Richard Devens 3 messenger from Charlestown,
and Ebenezer Dorr, who took the news over Boston Neck to
Roxbury, local town militia and Committees of Safety started to
send out their scouts. At times it appeared that there were more
riders abroad than there were soldiers; many of them were meeting
each other, dodging each other, or capturing each other. The
general confusion of this whirl of communications and espionage
was further augmented by the casual attitudes of many of the
riders. Just as the British officer didn't bother about Revere after
chasing him three hundred yards, other officers that night caught
scouts, chatted with them, and let them go. The early spring had
apparently stimulated a certain amount of nocturnal wanderings
among many provincials, for the accounts of British advance
officers were full of amiable conversations with people they met on
the road. Certainly the officers had been under orders from Gage
to treat the colonists they encountered with respect, but they
carried it to such extremes that they nearly defeated the whole
purpose of their being out at all.

Richard Devens, of Charlestown, had passed British officers on
the Lexington-Cambridge road as he rode home in a chaise with
Abraham Watson. Both men were known members of the Com-
mittees of Safety and Supplies, which had been meeting that day at
Menotomy. The British officers did not even bother to stop them.
Devens and Watson then turned around and "rode through" 10
the officers in order to go back to Menotomy and warn three other
committee members, Elbridge Gerry, Charles Lee, and Azor Orne,
who were lodging in Menotomy overnight, that the British were
out. Although the British officers must have thought this conduct
of the men in the chaise unusual, they again did not stop them. As
a result, when Elbridge Gerry got the news, he sent yet another

96

THE BRITISH
AT LEXINGTON COMMON"

Qzptatii "Parker handfal of mmteww stood
oulexiwftm Cwimi
of tke Tfritisfofbms*

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

rider out to Jonas Clarke's house in Lexington with the information
about the officers. This messenger got there in good time,, waited for
Hancock to write a polite little note of acknowledgment to Gerry,
and rode back unmolested to Menotomy.

Meanwhile, some Lexingtomans were also abroad on the high-
ways. Solomon Brown, the eighteen-year-old son of one of Jonas
Clarke's deacons and a minuteman, was returning from market
in Boston in the late afternoon when he passed some of Gage's
leisurely riding officers on the road to Lexington. Brown noticed
that although it was one of those clear, warm April days occasion-
ally visited upon New England, the officers were wearing their
greatcoats. The reason was apparent to him when, as their coats
fell back, he saw that they were wearing side arms which was
strictly forbidden by Gage when the officers rode into the country
for their own exercise and pleasure. The officers, furthermore,
looked to the observant young Solomon as if they were killing time
before taking up their posts on the Lexington-Concord road, and
"they did not care to reach there until the shades of the evening had
set in." 17 The officers paid no special attention to Solomon, some-
times passing him and then lingering while he passed them. Finally,
Solomon spurred his horse and raced into Lexington, where he
stopped at Munroe's Tavern 3 some distance south of the Common,
and told William Munroe, the orderly sergeant of the minutemen,
about the armed officers.

Lexington's excitement began with the prompt action that
Munroe took, apparently on his own initiative but certainly with
the approval of Clarke, Adams,, and Hancock. Since Solomon
Brown had told him that there were nine officers, Munroe assumed
that it was Adams and Hancock whom they were after, nine officers
being about what Gage might send to take two dignitaries into
custody. So with a sergeant's precision he posted an armed guard
of nine men, including himself, around Jonas Clarke's house on
the Bedford road. Word of this action, of course, spread im-
mediately all over the town. By nine o'clock about thirty minute-

97

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

men, intending perhaps to relieve the guard in shifts, were gathered
in Buckman's Tavern. Soon they were joined by others who came
to the tavern after seeing the officers ride into Lexington. As the
officers disappeared down the road to Concord on the opposite
side of the Common from Buckman's, the minutemen decided, in a
spontaneous conference of war with Jonas Clarke, that the officers
ought to be followed, lest they double back to Lexington, although
what the followers were supposed to do about it isn't clear. Three
minutemen were chosen for this ambiguous assignment: Elijah
Sanderson, Jonathan Loring, and Solomon Brown, The latter
was perfectly willing to go himself but flatly refused to take his
horse, which he had exhausted on the ride home from Boston.
Jonas Clarke promptly offered his horse, and so three more riders
dashed off into the night, these in pursuit of Gage's nine riders.
Around ten o'clock just when Gage's troops were rendezvous-
ing on the Boston shore of the Back Bay and Paul Revere, stOl
in Boston, was setting out for Dr. Warren's the three Lexington
riders, who were totally inexperienced spies, were captured by the
nine British officers they were following. When they heard the
approaching horses, the British officers had lined themselves up
across the road. The officers remained mounted. "One rode up
and seized my bridle," Elijah Sanderson deposed, "and another
my arm, and one put his pistol to my breast, and told me, if I
resisted, I was a dead man. I asked, what he wanted. He replied,
he wanted to detain me a little while. He ordered me to get off my
horse. Several of them dismounted and threw down the wall, and
led us into a field. They examined and questioned us where we
were going, etc. Two of them stayed in the road, and the other
seven with us, relieving each other from time to time. They
detained us in that vicinity till a quarter past two o'clock at night.
An officer, who took out his watch, informed me what the time was.
It was a bright moon-light after the rising of the moon, and a
pleasant evening. During our detention, they put many questions
to us, which I evaded. They kept us separately, and treated us

98

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

very civilly. They particularly inquired where Hancock and Adams
were; also about the population. One said, 'You've been number-
ing the inhabitants, haven't ye? 3 I told him how many it was re-
ported there were. One of them spoke up and said, 'There were
not so many men, women and children.' They asked as many
questions as a yankce could." 18

While the nine British officers were conducting their somewhat
aimless interrogation of the three young minutemen, back hi Lex-
ington the armed guard still surrounded the Clarke house with its
swollen population of fourteen Clarkes, Adams, Hancock, his Aunt
Lydia, and Dorothy Quincy. When the three scouts did not return,
Sergeant Munroe was apparently convinced that they were caught
as the officers returned toward Lexington to nab Adams and Han-
cock. Safe behind the guard, the Clarkes and their distinguished
but now-troublesome guests retired around midnight.

Shortly after they had all gone to bed, Paul Revere pulled up to
the Clarke house and was intercepted by Sergeant Munroe, who
had apparently never heard of him. Revere, not used to dealing
with underlings, demanded admission to the house. "I told him,"
Munroe said in his deposition,, "the family had just retired and
had requested that they might not be disturbed by any noise about
the house." This apparently irritated Revere, who had had a busy
day and a long and tense ride. " 'Noise/ said he. 'You'll have
noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out.' " Munroe
then let him pass, and Revere rapped on the parsonage door. A
window flew up, and the massive head of the Reverend Jonas
Clarke emerged to ask who was there. Still irritated, Revere refused
to answer and demanded to see Hancock, who by this time heard
the commotion and shouted out merrily, "Come in, Revere; we're
not afraid of you" 19 Revere gave Hancock a written statement
from Dr. Warren, in which he estimated that Gage was sending out
"twelve or fifteen hundred men" 20 about twice the number
actually sent but otherwise correct in its details.

Revere refreshed himself and Deacon Larkin's horse at the

99

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

Clarke establishment, which was now thoroughly aroused for the
rest of the night. Captain John Parker was sent for and came the
two miles from his farm. A messenger was sent to Buckman's to
get some of the minutemen there to act as couriers to rouse others
who lived some distance from the center of Lexington. Parker
himself went to Buckman's later and made it his headquarters for
the night. Finally, William Dawes arrived at the Clarke house with
the duplicate message from Dr. Warren.

There evidently being a shortage of horses in Lexington by now,
Revere and Dawes took their briefly rested mounts and set out for
Concord. Since neither knew the road well and since their horses
were still tired and there seemed to be plenty of time anyhow, they
started out at a relaxed pace and were soon overtaken by one of
the few riders of the night who seemed to be about normal
activities. It was Dr. Samuel Prescott., youngest of a long line of
Concord physicians, who was going home after courting his girl,
Lydia Mulliken, who lived in Lexington near Munroe's Tavern
on the main road to Cambridge. Lydia's brother, Nathaniel, was a
minuteman, and Prescott undoubtedly found that the evening was
destined to other things than courting. He mounted his horse,
when Nathaniel Mulliken was alerted, and rushed off yet another
courier to take the news to Concord. When he caught up with
Revere and Dawes, the two express riders talked to him and
found him to be "a high son of Liberty." 21 When Dr. Prescott
pointed out that he knew almost everybody in Concord and
that they were much more apt to believe him than a couple
of strangers, Dawes and Revere adopted him as a partner.

About halfway to Concord, while Dawes and Prescott were
alarming a household, Revere spotted two British officers on the
road ahead. He called to Dawes and Prescott that the three of
them could capture the officers, for although he knew that nine
officers had gone through Lexington, he was convinced that they
had broken up into teams. Revere was wrong. Before Dawes and
Prescott could reach him, lie was surrounded by four officers, and

100

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

as Dawes and Prescott came up they were corralled, too. The trio
were then forced into a pasture. Dr. Prescott said to Revere, as
they were being herded through an opening in the stone wall into
the pasture, that he was going to make a run for it. He jumped his
horse over another wall on his flank and, knowing the terrain well,
got away. Revere broke away and made for a woodland, intending
to dismount from Deacon Larkin's horse, which must have been
near exhaustion by now, and to run on foot into the woods. But
Revere guessed wrong again. More officers poured out of the
woods, capturing both Revere and his weary horse. Dawes mean-
while galloped his horse to a nearby farmhouse, at which he
stopped so suddenly his watch flew out of his pocket. Although he
lost both his horse and his watch, he eluded capture, and a few days
later he went back and found the watch. Dawes considered that his
night's work was done, and he went back on foot to Lexington,
where he kept out of sight.

Revere was taken in hand by an officer "who had appeared to
have the command there and [was] much of a gentleman. 5 ' 22
Although Revere was completely alone now and surrounded by
British officers, the interrogation session out in the pasture in the
moonlight was amiable enough, even polite. Revere was asked his
name ("Sir, may I crave your name?" 23 ), where he came from,
when he left Boston, and whether he was an express rider. Revere
"replied that I esteemed myself a man of truth" 24 and answered
all the questions truthfully. But when it came to the night's oper-
ations, Revere stretched the truth a little, and so did the officer. The
officer told Revere that he and the other officers were out to catch
deserters. "I told him I knew better. I knew what they were after;
that I had alarmed the country all the way up ; that their boats had
catched aground, and I should have five hundred men there soon;
one of them said they had fifteen hundred coming. He seemed
surprised and rode immediately off up the road to them that
stopped me ... They came down on a full gallop. One of them
(whom I since learned was Major Mitchell of the 5th Regiment)

101

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

clapped his pistol to my head and said he was going to ask me some
questions, and if I did not tell the truth he would blow rny brains
out." Revere gave the same answers. He was then searched for
arms (he had none) and told to mount. When he took the reins,
the major, who knew all about Revere's riding career, grabbed
them out of his hand. "By God, sir, you are not to ride with reins,
I assure you." 25 So another officer led Revere's horse.

When Revere and his captors got into the Lexington-Concord
road again, they were joined by other officers with four prisoners.
Three of them were the Lexington minutemen, Solomon Brown,
Sanderson, and Loring. The fourth was a one-armed peddler, who
seemed to have wandered into all this activity innocently, when
he had merely set out to Concord to get an early start in the
morning. It was now two o'clock in the morning, when the officers
marched their prisoners, all mounted, back toward Lexington.
After a while they cut the bridles and saddles loose on the horses
of the three minutemen and the peddler, drove the horses away,
and set all the prisoners but Revere free on foot. (Why the British
officers turned these men loose before their own soldiers were
near is a mystery, particularly since the officers had taken pains
to tell them that "four or five regiments of regulars' 526 were on the
way to Lexington.) A little later, outside Lexington, they took
Deacon Larkin's horse away from Revere and gave it to a heavy
sergeant of grenadiers whose own horse was tired, and set Revere
free. He headed across the burying ground, north of the Common,
and back to Jonas Clarke's house.

IV

Matching the comedy of errors that General Gage's advance
officers were achieving on their mission was the conduct of his
expedition from its start. From the time that Percy disabused
Gage of his illusion that it was to be a highly secret expedition that
would quickly and quietly accomplish its purpose and then get
back to Boston, everything went wrong.

1 02

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

His orders to Lieutenant Colonel Smith were sound enough:

Boston, April 18, 1775
Lieut. CoL Smith, loth Regiment -foot,
Sir

Having received intelligence that a quantity of ammunition,
provision, artillery, tents and small arms have been collected at
Concord,, for the avowed purpose of raising and supporting a re-
bellion against His Majesty, you will march with the corps of
grenadiers and light infantry , put under your command, with the
utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord,, where you will seize
and destroy oil the artillery, ammunition, provisions, tents, small
arms and all military stores whatever. But you will take care that
the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property.

You have a draught of Concord, on which is marked the houses,
barns, etc., which contain the above military stores. You will order
a trunnion to be knocked of each gun, but if it is found impractica-
ble on any, they must be spiked, and the carriages destroyed. The
powder and flower must be shook out of the barrels into the river,
the tents burnt, pork or beef destroyed in the best way you can
devise. And the men may put balls or lead in their pockets, throw-
ing them by degrees into ponds, ditches, etc., but no quantity to-
gether so that they may be recovered afterwards.

If you meet with any brass artillery, you will order their muzzles
to beat in, so as to render them useless.

You will observe by the draught that it mil be necessary to secure
the two bridges as soon as possible; you will, therefore, order a
party of the best marchers to go on with expedition for that pur-
pose.

A small party on horseback is ordered out to stop all advice of
your march getting to Concord before you, and a small number of
artillery go out in chaises to wait for you on the road with sledge
hammers, spikes, etc.

You will open your business and return with the troops as soon

103

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

as possible, which I must leave to your own judgment and dis-
cretion. I am.

Sir,

Your most obedient
humble servant,
Thos. Gage 27

These orders reflected much of Gage's policy from the beginning,
including absolute abstention from injuring the person or property
of any of the inhabitants. They were, moreover, extremely
specific, leaving nothing but the method of destroying some pork
and beef to Lieutenant Colonel Smith's judgment. But they failed
in one important particular: they gave the commanding officer,
who was apparently of a notoriously slow nature, no time table,
using only such phrases as "the utmost expedition 35 and "as soon
as possible." However suggestible these might have been to an
energetic officer, to Lieutenant Colonel Smith they meant only
"when you get around to it."

Lieutenant Colonel Smith was a portly professional officer of
the type, frequently caricatured in British lore, who settle into
comfortable ruts as soon as they reach regimental command level
and, having given up any thought of becoming generals, never
extend themselves. Physically a slow-moving man of conspicuously
generous bulk, Smith had no concept of time at all. His command
of the whole expedition when it was in his charge was characterized
by lateness and delay, as if he regarded Gage's emphasis of speed
as rhetorical language that always appeared in orders but did not
really mean anything.

Smith's command was made up of about seven hundred men, all
of them light infantry and grenadiers. Altogether there were
twenty-one companies, eleven of grenadiers and ten of light
infantry. These troops were not formed into regiments of their
own. Each infantry regiment had its own company of light infantry
and its own company of grenadiers. Each of the ten infantry regi-

104

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

ments in Boston and the one marine regiment furnished Its com-
pany of grenadiers; and all, except the Sixteenth Regiment, whose
light infantry had not yet arrived in Boston, furnished their com-
panies of light infantry. Although the British army often formed
temporary expeditionary forces by using the specialized troops from
several regiments, they were in a way mongrel forces. They always
posed a command problem and, to some extent, a morale problem,
particularly in an army that traditionally put the greatest emphasis
and distinction on the regiment. The system also required the com-
manding general to put together a command for the expeditionary-
force from the officers of the various regiments.

For the assignment on April eighteenth/ Francis Smith of the
Tenth Regiment was chosen for the command because he had
seniority (he applied for retirement the following August ) 3 long
experience in the American colonies going back at least twelve
years, and a long association with Gage. Probably, as far as Gage
was concerned, the choice of Smith avoided problems in the
garrison; his seniority made reaction of a political nature unlikely
which would have been of some importance to a man of Gage's
temperament. For second in command Gage selected Major John
Pitcaim, of the Second Marines Regiment. An able and enter-
prising officer, Pitcaim was a man of considerable character, re-
spected as much by Whigs as by Tories, by the patriots as much as
the loyalists. The patriot propagandist Ezra Stiles, the minister of
Newport and later President of Yale, referred to Pitcaim "as a
good man in a bad cause. 9 * It is probable that Gage thought of
Pitcaim as a guarantor of the two things that he considered most
urgent about the night's business, speed and taking care that there
was no plundering of the inhabitants. By assigning Pitcaim, Gage
also side-stepped garrison grumbling. There were nine regiments of
infantry besides Smith's. Eight of them would have been dis-
gruntled if an infantry major were chosen. There was only one
regiment of marines. It would, of course, be complimented.

When the British soldiers rendezvoused at the foot of Boston

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WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Common on the banks of the old tidal basin of the Charles, at ten
o'clock, there was time enough for them to be rowed across the
river, march out to Concord in the night, pass through Lexington
in the darkness, and arrive in Concord before daylight if Smith
had conducted the operation with "the utmost expedition." But
Smith was so slow that he wasted half the time some three hours
that It took to march to Concord. He was late from the very
beginning and did not even get to the rendezvous on time. An old
regimental officer of his limited enthusiasm was probably of the
opinion that the embarkation should be handled by underlings,
who would send to notify him when it was accomplished. The
brisk competent adjutant of the Twenty-third Regiment, Lieuten-
ant Frederick Mackenzie, was highly critical of the sloppiness of
the operation's beginnings. Mackenzie was not attached to the
light infantry or grenadiers, but as adjutant it was his job to see
that his regiment's companies reported for the rendezvous. Gage
had told the regimental officers that this was to be "exactly at ten
o'clock this night." To a soldier of Mackenzie's sober ability this
meant in no uncertain terms exactly at ten o'clock "The com-
panies of our regiment marched accordingly," Mackenzie wrote
in his diary, "and were the first, complete, at the place of parade;
here we found a number of the men-of-wars 3 and transports'
boats in waiting. 3 ' 28 After noting that everybody else was late,
Mackenzie had his professional conscientiousness jolted again by
the increasingly apparent fact that no one had appointed an
embarkation officer, and the men just stood around the boats.
Mackenzie himself, having got the approval of some navy officers
present, loaded the two companies from his regiment into the near-
est boats and had them wait offshore for orders to cross the river.
The companies from the other regiments followed his example and
boarded the boats until they were all filled. Then all the boats, the
bayonets of the soldier passengers flashing in the moonlight, floated
idly around until Lieutenant Colonel Smith got there.

Not only Smith but the companies of his own Tenth (Lincoln-

106

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

shire) Regiment got off to a bad start. Ensign Jeremy Lister of
the Tenth, although he was not in the light infantry or grenadier
companies, went down to the rendezvous anyhow, "being anxious
to know the reason of this order. 3329 He had his youthful pride in
his regiment severely shaken by the failure of its light infantry
company's lieutenant to report at the rendezvous. The lieutenant,
James Hamilton, was sent for repeatedly but still failed to show up,
finally pleading illness, which "was supposed by everybody to
be feigned which 'twas clearly proved to be the case afterwards," 30
"Thinking it would be rather a disgrace for the company to march
on an expedition, more especially it being the first, without its com-
plement of officers," Lister begged to be permitted to go in Hamil-
ton's place "for the honor of the regiment." His offer was
accepted, and he went back to his lodgings in the town to get his
field equipment.

Finally, Lieutenant Colonel Smith arrived and ordered the
boats to cross the river. But since the boats required two trips to
take all the men across, it was between midnight and one o'clock in
the morning before they were ferried across the few hundred yards
of the Charles' tidal backwash, the soldiers having been ready at
ten o'clock. Lieutenant Barker, the cantankerous officer of the
King's Own who disapproved of General Gage, Lieutenant
Colonel Smith, and all his superiors so heartily, found nothing right
in the operation, even after the long delay in getting the troops
over the river. "After getting over the marsh," he complained in
his diary, "where we were wet up to the knees, we were halted in a
dirty road and stood there until two o'clock in the morning, waiting
for provisions to be brought from the boats and to be divided, and
which most of the men threw away, having carried some with
'em." 31 In his eager disapproval of things Barker probably made
everything a little worse than it was, in order to prove his superiors
a little less competent than they were; but his chronology of all the
wasted time is accurate. Lieutenant William Sutherland, of the
Thirty-eighth Regiment, an altogether different type of young

107

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

officer, who had no complaints about anybody and who was on
the expedition as a volunteer to go in advance of the troops, re-
ported in his account that they had to wait for two hours in the
Cambridge marshes and "the tide being in we were up to our
middles before we got into the road." 32 Apparently, when the
troops were landed on the Cambridge shore from the boats, they
were on fairly dry land, but during the long delay the tide (Paul
Revere said "it was young flood" when he crossed an hour or so
earlier) had come in and filled the marshes around them. By the
time they were finally given the order to march, it was two o'clock
in the morning. After four hours from the time of the rendezvous
they were about a quarter of a mile from where they started.

The little army of seven hundred passed the Newell Tavern in
Menotomy, north of Cambridge, about three o'clock. The alerted
members of the Committee of Safety, Gerry, Lee, and Orne,
peered curiously out of a darkened upstairs window at the troops
marching by on the road below. The three dignitaries were startled
to see a sergeant's patrol turn into the path leading to their door.
Clad in nightshirts, they hurried to the nearest exit, which hap-
pened to be the door the soldiers were approaching. The landlord
shouted to Gerry, "For God's sake, don't open that door," S3 and
took the three committeemen out through a rear door. They hid
from the patrol by throwing themselves flat in the corn stubble of
the field behind the tavern an experience from which old Mr.
Lee, in his nightshirt and unaccustomed to the cold earth on an
April night, took cold and never recovered.

Back in Lexington the delay of the expeditionary force was so
considerable that there arose some doubt probably much to
Samuel Adams' distress as to whether it was coming or not.

The first alarm to the minutemen was given immediately after
Paul Revere's arrival at Jonas Clarke's house. Sergeant Munroe

108

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

kept the guard at the parsonage, for his hunch" that the British
were after Hancock and Adams seemed now confirmed by the
letter that Revere brought from Dr. Warren. Munroe sent another
horseman out into the night this one in the direction of Cam-
bridge to check the size of the British force and the rate of march.
Captain Parker had Ms minutemen, a hundred and thirty of them,
mustered on the Common, and Daniel Harrington, the clerk of
the company, whose house and blacksmith shop were across the
road from the Common, read the roll. This was probably done
at one o'clock. If the British had not wasted three hours in em-
barking and starting their march, they would have been well on
their way by then, probably entering the southeastern part of
Lexington. At one o'clock, however, they were still standing in
the Cambridge marshes and were to wait another hour before
marching.

The night was chilly in Lexington, and some of the minuternen
were old men. Having loaded their guns with powder and ball, they
had nothing to do but stand there, looking at the candlelights
flickering in the warm comfort of Buckman's Tavern across the
road. They began to grumble as the time passed. There was no
word from Munroe's couriers who had gone to find the British
army and none from the three minutemen who had set out earlier
in the night after the British officers who went to Concord. So
Parker sent out another rider. This one came back to the Common
at about two o'clock and reported that there was no army on the
way to Lexington. At that hour, of course, the British were still
getting into formation in the Cambridge marshes. So Parker dis-
missed the company, subject to the drum call of William Diamond
in case the British should show up after all.

The minutemen who lived nearby went home, and the rest
went to Buckman's Tavern, where they talked, dozed, and prob-
ably drank a little to take the chill out of their bones. At inter-
vals Parker sent couriers down the road toward Cambridge four
In all but none of them came back. The disappearance of these

109

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

horsemen permanently into the night bothered no one. It was
apparently assumed from their failure to return that they could
find no trace of the British or else that the latter were so far away
that the couriers had to go all the way to Boston to find them. Lex-
ington now had seven official couriers riding around the Middlesex
roads in every direction; in addition Revere, Dawes, and the re-
sourceful young Dr. Prescott, who had come to Lexington to spend
a quiet evening with his fiancee, were bound for Concord; and
there were also numerous individuals, including the one-armed
peddler, riding around. But nobody had yet seen any British army.

Back at Jonas Clarke's house, a five-minute walk from Buck-
man's, where the remaining minutemen waited, there had been
some activity. Paul Revere, horseless, had tramped across the old
burial ground, where all the ancestors of the minutemen had been
sleeping peacefully for a century and longer. He had stayed out of
sight of the Common by going through the fields behind the
Harrington houses, north of the Common, and thence through
pastures and wood lots to Clarke's house. In contrast to his earlier
visit that night, the house was bright with light, and all but the
smallest Clarkes were wide awake. The leaders, Adams and Han-
cock, were in conference with Jonas Clarke. Hovering around in
the background were Aunt Lydia and Dorothy Quincy.

Hancock was being difficult. Seized by one of his periodic
yearnings for the dramatic, he was all for taking to the field per-
sonally and, not forgetting that he was lately a colonel command-
ing the Independent Corps of Cadets, stopping the British army. If
he was seeking to impress his young and not easily impressed
fiancee, he was wasting his time. Years afterward, when Hancock
was in his grave, his widow, full of irreverent memories and with
an old lady's liveliness, recalled the night of April eighteenth to
William H. Sumner: "Mr. Hancock was all night cleaning his
gun and sword and putting his accoutrements in order, and was
determined to go out to the plain by the meetinghouse ... to
fight [along] with the men who had collected . . . but partially

no

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

provided with arms, and those that they had were in most miserable
order." 34 While Hancock was busy with his warlike gestures,
Clarke and Adams consulted with Captain Parker of the minute-
men and apparently also drew Sergeant Munroe into their de-
liberations.

When Revere arrived with his report of his capture by the
British officers and their conversation, it was agreed that the
British meant business. It was hastily concluded that Adams and
Hancock had better get away from Lexington before the British
troops arrived. But up until their departure, Dorothy Quincy
told Sumner, Hancock insisted on fighting the British himself.
"It was with very great difficulty that he was dissuaded from it by
Mr. Clarke and Mr. Adams." 35 He nevertheless went down to the
Common to see the minutemen and came back to the Clarke house
to repeat his desire to fight. Adams finally stopped his protests by
pointing out the importance of Hancock, and incidentally of
himself, to the leadership of the cause. With his own fanaticism
characteristically tempered by prudence, Adams declared flatly,
"It [fighting] is not our business. We belong to the Cabinet." 36
This convinced Hancock finally. But, according to Sergeant Mun-
roe's deposition, he had one last military threat to make as he
left the Clarke house. Aunt Lydia and Dorothy Quincy remaining
behind. "If I had my musket, I would never turn my back on
those troops." 37

Samuel Adams hated to ride horseback, and so a carriage was
brought. Sergeant Munroe led the party, consisting of Adams,
Hancock, Revere, and Hancock's secretary, John Lowell, to the
north of Lexington. There he left them concealed in a clump of
woods. Shortly after Munroe's departure it occurred to Hancock
that the trunkf ul of papers, many of them dealing with the business
of the Provincial Congress and the Committee of Safety, had
been left behind in LowelFs room at the Buckman Tavern, right
beside the Common where the British might easily capture it.
Revere and Lowell went back to get it before the British appeared.

in

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

So the long visit of Samuel Adams and John Hancock to the
little village of Lexington came to an end early on the morning of
April nineteenth although from all the evidence later available,
particularly General Gage's orders to Colonel Smith, they could
have stayed in Jonas Clarke's house until they left for Philadelphia.
For four weeks Adams, Hancock, and Clarke had been together.
For three days, since Revere's Sunday visit, they knew that a
British march into the countryside, probably through Lexington
to Concord, was likely. For four hours, they knew that it was
certain. Since Hancock's behavior, brave or simply foolhardy as
it may have been, during those last four hours, ruled him out as
a serious adviser on the military situation (he apparently saw
nothing unwise and useless in the President of the Provincial
Congress standing with sword drawn and pistol cocked in the line
of march of British soldiers supposedly intent on arresting him),
Adams and Clarke unquestionably made up a policy between
themselves. Adams knew the broad strategy of the resistance, be-
cause he was at this point its sole architect. Clarke knew the men
of Lexington and, what is more, could control them as no outsider
could. The policy obviously determined upon between the time of
Revere's first alarm and of the minutemen's first muster and the
time of the actual arrival of the British troops, was for the minute-
men, however outnumbered, to make a conspicuous stand but not
to fire.

As for Captain Parker, he was a simple farmer, of some military
experience but with no pretensions to wisdom in grand political
strategy. There were only two sources of counsel that he would be
apt to heed on such matters. One was his only formal source of
authority, the Provincial Congress, whose real leader, Samuel
Adams, was five minutes' walk from Parker's headquarters at
Buckman's all that night of alarms. The other was the Reverend
Jonas Clarke, Parker's pastor and friend, the real political leader
of Lexington and the draftsman of its statements of public policy in
provincial affairs. It is inconceivable that in all those hours of wait-

112

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

ing, Parker would not have had the counsel of Adams and Clarke
if not their directives. And it is the only explanation of Parker's
conduct as commander of the minutemen on Lexington Common.
Now, "between daylight and sunrise/' as Sergeant Munroe,
who had returned from showing Adams and Hancock to their
retreat in the woods, put it. Captain Parker got his first definite
word that the British were indeed coming. It was four-thirty in
the morning now. All Captain Parker's minutemen, except for the
twenty-five or thirty at Buckman's Tavern, had gone home. And
the British force of seven hundred light infantry and grenadiers
was a mile and a quarter away. Captain Parker aroused William
Diamond and sent him out on the Common to beat the drum call
to arms.

VI

After all the inefficiency of Lieutenant Colonel Smith and the
British and after all the efficiency of Dr. Warren in Boston and
Revere and Dawes, Captain Parker and the Lexington militia
ended up with about fifteen minutes to prepare for their gallant
but absurdly hopeless appearance against the British. This was
due to the fact that, unlike the British officers who had been sent
out in advance of the troops the previous afternoon and who
caught provincial messengers only to let them go again, there were
two highly competent junior officers moving somewhat in advance
of the force itself; Lieutenant Sutherland, the last-minute volun-
teer, and Lieutenant Adair, of the Second Marines Regiment. One
of them on each side of the road, Sutherland and Adair captured
the Lexington scouts in a systematic and rapid way as soon as
they came within reach. The first two the one sent out by
Sergeant Munroe and the first of Captain Parker's four they
encountered an hour after their march began, that is, about three
o'clock. "I heard Lieutenant Adair . . . call out, 'Here are two
fellows galloping express to alarm the country,' " Sutherland re-

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

ported; "on which I immediately rode up to them, seized one of
them, and our guide [a Boston Tory who accompanied the British]
the other, dismounted them, and by Major Pitcaira's direction,
gave them in charge of the men." 38

A little while afterward Major Mitchell and his fellow officers
who had captured Paul Revere, the three Lexington minutemen,
and the peddler on the Concord road and let them all go, ap-
proached Sutherland and Adair. Apparently having swallowed
Paul Revere's story that there were five hundred militia on Lex-
ington Common to intercept the British, Mitchell told Sutherland
that the whole country was alarmed and that he and his eleven
brother officers "had galloped for their lives" a remarkably
imaginary exposition for a military report, since the only pro-
vincials they had encountered, all without weapons, were a courier,
three Lexington scouts, and a one-armed peddler. But Mitchell's
dramatic story further alerted Sutherland and Adair, who shortly
saw another rider approaching them at a crossroad. They shouted
for him to stop, but he spurred his horse and took off. A surgeon's
mate of the Forty-third Infantry took up the chase and caught him.
This accounted for Captain Parker's second scout.

Sutherland and his companion, who were having a singularly
gregarious time of it for a country ride at three o'clock in the
morning, then met a mysterious "very genteel man, riding in a
carriage they call a sulky, who assured me there were six hundred
men assembled at Lexington." 39 Who this respectable bluffer,
who had a story matching Revere's, was, nobody knows; but his
information obviously strengthened the British conviction, origi-
nating with Major Mitchell's preposterous tale, that they were in
for a battle.

No sooner had the busy Sutherland got through with the genteel
man in the sulky than another rider came charging out of another
crossroad. Mitchell seized the bridle of his horse and dismounted
him Parker's third scout. As daylight began to break faintly in
the eastern sky, Sutherland met "some men with a wagon of wood

114

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

who told us there were odds of one thousand men in arms at
Lexington and added that they would fight us. 5340 The accumula-
tion of all this arithmetical information on the size of the provincial
force, which at the time consisted of twenty-five or thirty men
dozing in Buckman's, had a sobering effect on the already sober
Sutherland. He and Adair decided that they had better turn
around and find their own main forces, of whom they were now
quite far in advance, having already reached the southeastern
fringes of Lexington. But instead of finding the British troops,
they came upon "a vast number of the country militia going over
the hill with their arms to Lexington." Sutherland captured one
of them, Benjamin Wellington, a Lexington minuteman, who was
locally famous as "the first man to carry milk as far as Boston."
Sutherland disarmed him and told him to go home. (Wellington
went to the meetinghouse instead, got another gun, and joined the
other minutemen. ) Sutherland then continued to go back down the
road toward Boston until he reached the advanced section of the
British force under Major Pitcairn.

Earlier in the march Lieutenant Colonel Smith had detached
six companies of light infantry, about two hundred men, from his
main force and sent them ahead under the command of Pitcairn
to seize and hold the two bridges over the Concord River. This was
in accordance with the orders that he had from Gage, who ap-
parently had it in mind that the action would cut off militia from
the back country from molesting the other British troops while they
went about the main business of destroying the provincial stores
in the town of Concord. As soon as Pitcairn was advised by
Sutherland that there were apparently militia to the number of a
thousand men swarming all over the countryside, he ordered his
troops to stop and prime and load their guns. Lieutenant Colonel
Smith, meanwhile, had dispatched a messenger back to Boston to
tell General Gage that the whole expedition was not going as well
or as simply as planned and to urge upon the general to send out
additional forces to help him.

WILLIAM DIAMONDS DRUM

From all the information that the British now had, their situa-
tion was not very happy. They were not only three hours behind
schedule and would be marching into Concord in broad daylight,
but there was a force of anything from five hundred to a thousand
militia waiting for them at Lexington. And from what the British
officers knew of colonial fighting, the militia would be firing from
concealed positions behind stone walls, trees, farmhouses, and
barns. The officers had to assume a vigorous attack and prepare for
it. What they were to come upon, of course, was Captain Parker's
little band of no more than forty or fifty lined up like targets on
the open plain of Lexingtpn Common.

As far as Captain Parker knew, on the other hand, there were
twice as many British troops on the march than was actually the
case twelve to fifteen hundred as opposed to six or seven hundred.
Parker's fourth scout of the night, Thaddeus Bowman, had eluded
Sutherland, who had rejoined the main forces. Bowman saw the
British forces when they were a mile and a half away from the
Common, and it was his news that sent William Diamond out to
beat the drum call.

With the British only about twenty minutes away Parker had
little time to lose, but there was still time to send the men already
in Buckman's out behind walls or trees to keep the British under
observation and to make them convenient targets if necessary.
There was time to send his corporals to outposts on the roads
approaching the Common to disperse the minutemen arriving in
response to William Diamond's drum at concealed spots all around
the Common. Instead, Parker told Munroe to line up the handful
of minutemen present in rows on the Common. New arrivals were
shunted into the two thin rows, as they reached the Common, and
those who were unarmed went into the meetinghouse to get guns.

Down the road, which was straight and level for a thousand
yards before it reached the Common, the steady beat to arms of
William Diamond's drum was final and indisputable proof to the

116

THE MIDNIGHT RIDERS

British that their march was to be contested within a matter of
yards.

From the vantage point of an upstairs room in Buckman's
Tavern, where he had gone with John Lowell for Hancock's
trunk, Paul Revere looked down the Lexington road, almost a
quarter of a mile, toward Cambridge. "I saw the ministerial troops
from the chamber window, coming up the road," Revere recalled.
His only concern now was to get Hancock's trunk away. "We made
haste and had to pass through our militia, who were on a green
behind the meetinghouse, to the number, as I supposed, of fifty
or sixty. It was then daylight." Revere, whose role was of such
dramatic dimensions earlier in the night, had degenerated by now
into a general utility man. By the time the battle launching the war
of the American Revolution began, he was so occupied in lugging
a trunk up Bedford Road from Lexington Common that he did
not witness the event. "I could not see our militia for they were
covered from me by a house at the bottom of the road." 41

117

4
THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

: We shall be ready to sacrifice > life itself"

THE INHABITANTS OF LEXINGTON 1

Lexington, April 25, 1775

I, John Parker, of lawful age y and commander of the Militia in
Lexington, do testify and declare, that on the nineteenth instant,
in the morning, about one of the clock, being informed that there
were a number of Regular Officers riding up and down the road,
stopping and insulting people as they passed the road, and also was
informed that a number of Regular Troops were on their march
from Boston, in order to take the Province Stores at Concord,
ordered our militia to meet on the common in said Lexington, to
consult what to do 3 and concluded not to be discovered, nor meddle
or make with said Regular Troops (if they should approach) un-
less they should insult us; and upon their sudden approach, I
immediately ordered our Militia to disperse and not to fire. Imme-
diately said Troops made their appearance and rushed furiously }
fired upon and killed eight of our party, with out receiving any
provocation therefor from us.

John Parker

123

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Middlesex, ss., April 25, 1775:

The above named John Parker personally appeared^ and after
being duly cautioned to declare the whole truth, made solemn oath
to the truth of the above deposition., by him subscribed. Before us,

Wm. Reed
Josiah Johnson
Wm. Stickney

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 2

This is all that Captain John Parker ever said of the affair, and
it all leads up to a giant contradiction. He telescopes time a little
bit; it was "one of the clock 33 when he got the news and, shortly
after that when he ordered the muster of the minutemen on the
Common "to consult what to do," and then he dismissed the com-
pany. Three hours, at least, passed before he mustered them
a gai n three hours during which he had time to talk with Han-
cock, Adams, and Clarke. His first instinct not to act like an
authoritative military commander but to "consult" with his neigh-
bors and friends "what to do" was a perfectly natural one. The
minutemen were not easy men to order around. They were less a
military company than a voluntary, self-governing unit re-
sourceful, responsible, unafraid, but a collection of men who had
no bosses in their ordinary daily lives and who did not lend
themselves very readily to the mechanical response to orders
snapped at them by someone else. If Parker hadn't known this,
they would never have elected him their captain. They knew that
he was the kind of man who would, in an emergency involving
them as much as him, "consult what to do."

For his part, Parker, having lived all his life in Lexington, knew
these men who constituted his little militia well. He had gone to
school with them, went to church with them, fought alongside some
of them in the French and Indian wars, and was related either
directly or by marriage to many of them. The last thing that would
have occurred to him was that the relationship between him as

124

General Thomas Gage (1721-87),, married to an American^
was a gentle occupation commander. He was recalled to Eng-
land six months after Lexington and never returned to
America. COLLECTION OF COLONEL R.V.C. BODLEY, BOSTON

Major John Pitcairn (1722-75) of the Royal Marines, second
in command of the British forces, was disgusted with the con-
duct of his troops. He died two months after Lexington at the
Battle of Bunker's Hill, in the arms of his son, Lieutenant
Pitcairn, LEXINGTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

their captain and them as members of Ms company could be as
brisk and cold and automatic as that between a regular officer
and his troops. And Parker knew enough also about war in the
still heavily wooded American countryside to understand that, if
war came, the cause of the colonies would be less dependent upon
the parade ground discipline of the militia than upon those very
characteristics of individualism, independence, and resourcefulness
that made them unlikely exhibits on a parade ground but hard men
to beat in country warfare.

So John Parker consulted with these men, this varied assortment
who had paid him the compliment of electing him their captain.
They concluded not to make themselves conspicuous or to "med-
dle" with the British troops; and then they went home, or dozed
around Buckman's, until they were called again. Parker obviously
kept busy. He sent one messenger after another to find out and
report to him whether the British troops were on the Lexington-
Cambridge road and how far away. Dorothy Quincy remembered
that Hancock went down to the Common. It can be taken as
certain that, if he went, so did Samuel Adams, who would never
have let him out of sight in the midst of such promising events ; and
Clarke would have guided them down the road from the parson-
age, around the corner of the Common to Buckman's. The captain
of the militia would have discussed the night's affairs with the
President of the Provincial Congress and with the Delegate to the
Continental Congress and with his own pastor. And it was con-
cluded, from the evidence of what happened afterward, that the
minutemen would make a show of strength on the open Common,
but that they would not fire. Apparently they would just stand
there, as seven hundred British soldiers, on their first expedition
after a year's dreary occupation of an isolated peninsular port
town, marched harmlessly by a few feet away. Whatever anyone
else thought of this placid picture, Samuel Adams, who had a
profound understanding of the abrasive qualities inherent in such
a situation, knew better. All his ten years' experience with the

125

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Boston mobs, all his careful manipulation and channeling of the
prides and prejudices, strengths and weaknesses, capacities and
limitations of human beings as parts of a group would have gone
for nothing if he hadn't known better. And, what was worse, so
would have the unbelievably singlehanded success of Samuel
Adams, thus far, in keeping the issue of revolt against Great Britain
alive in the colonies.

Parker's men took a suicidal stand, and the issue burst fully into
life. When the approach of the British was unmistakable, he had
sent young William Diamond to beat the call to arms. He met the
assembling men on the Common and told Sergeant Munroe to
draw them up in the two long thin lines to make them look more
formidable in numbers than they really were. Having perhaps
twenty minutes from the time that Thaddeus Bowman came to
him with the last intelligence of the morning until the British were
upon him, he made no effort to get his men into the readily avail-
able positions in adjacent pastures and woodlands from which they
could have both observed the British and had the advantage of
surprise and mobility in case of conflict. But he lined them up on
the Common, with orders not to fire.

All this was as it should be if one understood Adams' growing
problem of unifying the colonies behind some incontrovertible
event that would make it clear to any American colonist that life
under the British was utterly impossible. Adams, of course, was
familiar with all the rabble-rouser charges against him and knew
also that many of the Middle Atlantic and Southern colonists,
sympathetic and active in the colonial cause, regarded him as an
inciter of mob actions when it suited his political purposes. But
this time he had something to go on. He was fresh from a meeting
of the Provincial Congress that had just decided, not without his
guidance, "that should any body of troop with artillery and bag-
gage, march out of Boston, the country should instantly be
alarmed, and called together to oppose their march to the last
extremity. 5 ' 3 Adams would be willing to take a chance on the ex-

126

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

pedltlonary forces of the nineteenth having artillery or baggage
with them.

If after his original consultation with his minutemen on the
Common at the first alarm Parker was advised by the high
leadership concentrated by chance in Lexington that night, not
having any other authority over him and no military superior
present, he would have seen it as appropriate and fitting to
acquiesce. His own military experience would have made him
realize that a company captain is not a general or a strategical staff.
But once the British started to move toward his men, from the
road on to the Common, he felt as any company commander and
ranking officer present would : the situation, including their safety,
was entirely his responsibility. And he ordered them, not to stand
their ground and not to fire, but to disperse. It was the only battle
order that he said he gave; and it was the only one that any officer
in his situation could have given. As it turned out, it served Adams'
cause just as well.

ii

Full of bloated intelligence that had from five hundred to a
thousand militia concentrated in Lexington to mow them down,
the five British advanced light infantry companies, with Major
Pitcairn in command, moved into the straight stretch of the road
from which the Common was in sight. Their guns were primed
and loaded. They expected a fight. Pitcaim, with some of his
mounted officers, rode up to the head of the column.

The Lexington Common that Pitcairn saw that April sunrise
was a two-acre triangle, not wholly open but somewhat cluttered
for its size with the ungainly three-storied oblong meetinghouse
facing down the road toward the oncoming British. On the left
was the belfry that looked as if it had been plucked off the top of
the meetinghouse by some gargantuan child and left incongruously
at its side. Behind the belfry was the little schoolhouse and to its

127

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

left the well put there for the townspeople's use. Behind the
meetinghouse was a large tree, but the Common was otherwise
almost entirely cleared. On the road to the right, as Pitcairn ap-
proached the Common, was Buckman's Tavern, a pleasantly
proportioned building with two massive chimneys and already
nearly a century old. Stretching along the Bedford Road toward
Jonas Clarke's house was the tavern's string of stables and out-
buildings. Almost directly across the Common from Buckman's,
on the left road leading to Concord, was the house of Marrett
Munroe, married to Captain Parker's sister, whose son, Nathan,
was among the minutemen assembled on the Common. And
facing the Common from the north side, looking down across it
to the road from Boston were two other houses both, like Mar-
rett Munroe's, with that sensitive regard for proportions that dis-
tinguished the buildings of villages all over New England in the
eighteenth century. In one of these lived Daniel Harrington, the
clerk of Captain Parker's company, who had read the roll earlier
that night, his wife, and their seven young children. In the other
lived young Jonathan Harrington and his wife and small son.
Between the houses, set back a distance, was David Harrington's
blacksmith shop, as handsomely proportioned as the houses. For
the rest, surrounding the Common, there were only pastures and
woodlands and, a little off toward the west off the Concord road,
the old burial ground.

On and around the little Common stood perhaps a quarter of
the town's population. Sergeant Munroe had got some forty of his
minutemen in line; perhaps thirty more were milling around,
going to the meetinghouse for ammunition, coming in across the
meadows and pastures from their houses, crossing the road from
Buckman's. Other townspeople, unarmed but curious, stood
around the Common, in the yards of the three houses or behind
the stone walls of the pastures and meadows Jonas Clarke among
them later on. From their own windows the families of Daniel and
Jonathan Harrington and Nathan Munroe could watch all that

128

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

went on. Seventy militia, more or less; a hundred spectators, most
of whom would be getting up at this hour anyway; and, hauling
the trunk up the edge of the Common, Revere and Lowell this
was the formidable force that confronted Major Pitcairn and his
five companies of light infantry as they came within sight of the
Common.

Primed as they were for at least five hundred and possibly a
thousand aimed belligerents, the approaching British must have at
first got the impression that the whole number present was much
larger than it actually was, and in the dawning light it would have
been difficult to distinguish combatant from spectator. Yet there
was no mention later by the British officers of the figures five hun-
dred or a thousand. Major Pitcairn thought that he saw "near two
hundred of the rebels/ 94 Ensign de Berniere of the Tenth Infan-
try's light infantry company, which was in the van of the British
inarch, said that "there were about a hundred and fifty rebels,"
and he also mentioned that the militia were drawn out widely
separated in their lines. 5 The disgruntled Lieutenant Barker of The
King's Own Regiment, who resented so much the delay at Cam-
bridge and was convinced from the beginning that the whole
expedition would fail, put the number "between two and three
hundred." 6 The British official reports, in language of qualifying
vagueness, used "about two hundred." 7 Only the British captured
later in the day and who gave depositions to the provincials came
closer in their estimates, perhaps because they did not have to
justify actions of the British army any longer or perhaps because
the provincial authorities saw to it that they did not over-
estimate the size of their opposition. John Bateman of the Fifty-
second Regiment deposed "there was a small party of men gathered
together/ 58 and Lieutenant Edward Gould of The King's Own was
the most nearly accurate of all: "We saw a body of provincial
troops armed, to the number of about sixty or seventy men." 9

Although little more than half of them got into Sergeant
Munroe's deceptively stretched out platoons, Captain Parker did

129

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

have some seventy men altogether on or near the Common. Even
this small number constituted one tenth of Lexington's entire
population and little less than half the adult male population. And
they were, in fact,, pretty much what would be found as the male
population of any country village. Among the oldest was Ensign
Robert Munroe, the old veteran officer who had fought other wars
on the British side. At sixty-three, he could have been excused from
duty as a minuteman, but old men of his type are not easy to put
aside, and he joined his two sons and two sons-in-law in the field.
Of the same determined bend was his fifty-four-year-old cousin,
Jedediah Munroe, who armed himself with in addition to his
musket a long sword brought by his forebears from Scotland.
Another senior minuteman was the close neighbor of the pastor and
a first cousin of Captain Parker, the aging Jonas Parker, who had
told everyone in Lexington that, no matter what the circumstances,
he would never run from the British, and whose son, Jonas, Jr.,
stood at his side. The oldest of all was Grandfather Moses Har-
rington, sixty-five, whose youngest son Caleb was with him. His
nephew, Jonathan, who owned the house facing the Common,
was also with him, and so were a dozen other nephews and remote
cousins. There were other father-and-son combinations: old
Thomas Hadley and his son, Samuel; John Muzzy and his oldest
son, Isaac. Altogether there were eight father-and-son combina-
tions on the Common. There were also very young men, twelve in
their teens and a score in their twenties. Most of them were farmers,
but there were also tradesmen among them.

There was the slave, Prince Estabrook, highly popular with
Lexington children as a willing referee in their games. There
were also some minutemen from the companies of other towns who
just happened to be in Lexington by chance and who enlisted in
Parker's company for the night. As a military company the whole
collection would never look like much: some old men, a generous
block of the middle-aged, some inexperienced youths in their teens.
They had with them their old hunting muskets, or else they had to

130

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

go to the meetinghouse to get one belonging to the town. Half of
them had gone home and back to deep since the first alarm and
did not move too quickly, and many of them were not in a position
to hear any orders that Captain Parker might give. Several, like
Joseph Comee, were in the meetinghouse, out of ear-range of the
orders of Captain Parker or anyone else outside.

As he saw this group on the Common, Major Pitcairn, a man
of quick and sound judgment, saw clearly enough how to handle
it. He ordered his soldiers not to fire but to surround the motley
group and disarm it. He did not even want to capture them. In
the first place, he regarded the whole thing as a civil action, in-
volving not an army but British subjects in violation of the govern-
ment's laws; in the second place, there were specific orders not to
molest the inhabitants; third, the purpose of the expedition was to
destroy the stores at Concord and to get back to Boston; finally,
no provision was made for the taking or transporting of prisoners.
On the other hand, he could not just let them go away with their
arms, possibly to follow his line of march to Concord, taking pot-
shots at his troops on the way. So he did what had to be done: "I
instantly called to the soldiers not to fire but to surround and disarm
them." 10

By this time some of Parker's men had heard their own captain's
almost simultaneous order to disperse : "I immediately ordered our
troops to disperse and not to fire"* 1 -

There were then, so far as the testimony of both commanding
officers go, only two orders given. Both included the directive "not
to fire." That these were the orders given was confirmed on both
sides. Lieutenant Sutherland, who was one of the mounted officers
close to Pitcairn, wrote: "I heard Major Pitcaim's voice call out,
'Soldiers, don't fire, keep your ranks, form and surround them/ " 12
And Ensign de Berniere, in the first company of light infantry:
"He ordered our light infantry to advance and disarm them." 13
As the light infantry moved to the right of the meetinghouse and
between it and Buckman's Tavern, toward the militia, somewhat

131

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

behind the meetinghouse. Major Pitcairn and his group of
mounted officers galloped their horses around the left of the meet-
inghouse. This was a sensible tactic for Pitcaim, because it would
put him to one side of both forces, in ready hearing range of either,
it still being a point of some consequence to him that the colonists
were as much subjects of the King as the troops were. There he
repeated his order to his own troops, and he told the colonists to
lay down their arms.

Those of Captain Parker's company who were on the Common
had heard his order to disperse, and they started to break ranks.
But they did not disperse in a very orderly or uniformly prompt
manner "many of them not so speedily as they might have done/ 5
said Jonas Clarke. 14 Men like these were not apt by training or by
nature to react instantly or uniformly. Besides, some of them who
had grown up with John Parker would be much more apt to
consider an order from him a strong suggestion than an absolute
directive. A few would do as they pleased. One such, old Jonas
Parker, the captain's first cousin, filled his hat full of flints and
musket balls, set it on the ground conveniently between his feet,
and prepared to spend the rest of the morning there if need be to
fight it out with the British. It was he who had had no intention to
run. Others of the company drifted slowly toward the edges of the
Common, taking their muskets with them. Some hurried away at
Parker's order, but they also took their guns. No one followed
Pitcairn's order to lay down his arms.

While this somewhat straggling performance was going on, the
British light infantry, in the custom of the day, started shouting as
they charged forward. Someone, possibly one of the provincials
off the Common, fired a shot. Perhaps it was meant to be an addi-
tional alarm a common practice since the days of Indian raids.
Or perhaps a British soldier, carried away by the excitement, fired
at the minutemen. Or else a young officer backed up an order to the
minutemen to lay down their arms with a warning shot from his
pistol. Or possibly someone's musket flashed in the pan by accident.

132

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

In any case, the tense but almost silent scene of a moment earlier
on the little Common erupted suddenly into noisy, wholly uncon-
trolled violence. And Major Pitcairn, an officer of the Marines
commanding light infantry companies, could not restrain the
troops, who had long since broken ranks and were firing at random
with no orders from anyone. Pitcaim rode in among them,
shouting orders to stop the firing and striking his sword down-
ward furiously in the regulation cease-fire signal. The light infantry
paid no attention to him. As a Marine officer, Pitcaim's contempt
thereafter for the light infantry, up to his death at Bunker Hill
three months later, was withering. The official reports of all the
British command officers that day made some pro forma comment
on the courage and intrepidity of His Majesty's troops. But not
Pitcairn. He said that he would "in as concise a manner as possible
state the facts," and he was scathing in his conciseness: ". . .
without any order or regularity, the light infantry began a scat-
tered fire and continued in that situation for some little time,
contrary to the repeated orders both of me and the officers that
were present." 15

Lieutenant Barker of the King's Own, of course, was not sur-
prised at any of this and in his diary was just as contemptuous of
his fellow infantrymen as Pitcairn was: ". . . our men without
any orders rushed in upon them . . . the men were so wild they
could hear no orders." 16 Some of the junior officers, however,
seemed to be under the impression that the firing was ordered and
certainly had none of the sense of outrage about it that Pitcairn
showed. Ensign Jeremy Lister, whose company was the first on the
Common, took the firing as inevitable and, perhaps with the
bravado of very young officers, as a light matter; "we returned
their salute" was the way Lister put it. 17 But de Berniere, who was
a serious-minded and responsible young officer, said simply that
"our soldiers returned the fire." 18 Lieutenant Sutherland, who had
got into all this from insisting on going along as a last-inimite
volunteer, was a resourceful and rather sober officer,, and on ar-

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

riving with Pitcaini on the Common immediately rode Ms horse
in among the minutemen, repeating Pitcairn's orders to them to
lay down their arms. He gave no information in his account on
the manner in which the British started their firing, for he had
troubles of his own. He did not have his own horse or even an army
horse. His mount was appropriated from one of the Middlesex
countrymen he had intercepted during the night's march, and the
horse took a disturbed view of all the shouts and shots and con-
fusion on the Common. On the first exchange of shots Sutherland's
horse took off, dashing right through the midst of the dispersing
militia and then six hundred yards up the road toward Jonas
Clarke's house. By the time he got his horse turned and back,
the minutemen had all disappeared into the woods and the grena-
diers had arrived.

Meanwhile, most of Parker's men were dispersing, although a
few stayed where they were. As soon as they got off the Common,
a few of the dispersers turned and fired, and apparently there was
some firing from Buckman's Tavern (which was returned, the
shot in the door still being visible) and from the meetinghouse.
Altogether there were known to be only eight minutemen who
actually fired on the British, and the engagement on the Common
was less a battle or even a skirmish than an hysterical massacre at
the hands of badly disciplined British soldiers.

Old Jedediah Munroe, who had brought the ancestral sword
along, did not even have time to use his musket, for he was shot
down and wounded early in the affray. Ensign Robert Munroe,
Lexington's local hero at the capture of Louisburg, thirty years
earlier, was killed before firing a shot. Corporal John Munroe, on
the first discharge, thought that the British were just firing powder
and told his cousin Ebenezer so. Just then one musket ball entered
Ebenezer's arm, another grazed his cheek, and a third ripped a
hole in his coat. He lifted his own musket and fired. His cousin
John stuffed two balls down the muzzle of his gun, having rammed

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

It with enough powder to fire a cannon, took aim, and fired. A foot
of the muzzle was shot off with the balk

The only other minuteman who fired while still in the line was
Jonas Parker, the captain's old cousin, who was never going to run.
He was hit before he fired, and took aim and shot from the ground.
He then reached for a ball and flint from his hat that he had set so
conveniently on the ground between his feet, when he was run
through with a British bayonet. Along with Parker and Robert
Munroe, two other minutemen were killed on the Common proper
before they had much chance to fire at the British. Isaac Muzzy,
who had arrived with Ms father, was shot down near his position
in the line, and so was Jonathan Harrington, whose house stood
not a hundred yards away. Ruth Fiske HaningtoiL, the Lexington
doctor's niece, who had married Jonathan Hairington nine years
earlier, and their eight-year-old son watched the young minuteman
crawl across the green of the Common to his own doorstep, where
he died.

The rest of the dead were killed after they had left the Common
but were still close to it. Samuel Hadley and John Brown were both
killed after leaving the Common. Another man, Ashabel Porter of
Wobum, one of the riders of the night picked up by the British and
taken captive by them, saw the battle on the Common as a chance
to escape, and he bolted from the British lines before the segment
he was in reached the Common. He was shot and killed as he ran
away.

The American fire did not come close to matching the British in
volume, and it was extremely erratic and irregular, Solomon
Brown, who had been the first to discover the advance British
officers from Boston that morning and caused Sergeant Munroe
to post the guard around Hancock's house, fired from behind a
stone wall just beyond Buckmaif s Tavern ; two British musket balls
barely missed him, one ripping his coat and another hitting the
wall. Brown made a wide swing around to the back door of
Buckman's, to which he supposed most of the minutemen, perhaps

*35

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

from habit, had withdrawn. As he went through the tavern, how-
ever, he found no one except the baffled one-armed peddler, who
had wandered into history by being taken prisoner with Revere
and the others earlier that morning. Brown opened the front door,
by which time the rear units of the British were abreast of the
tavern alongside the Common. Brown picked a likely British officer
as a target, aimed, and fired. He got an enlisted man of another
company in the leg.

Lieutenant William Tidd, Captain Parker's second in com-
mand, got clear of the Common on Parker's command to disperse
and started up the road toward Clarke's house. A mounted officer
pursued Mm, so Tidd jumped a fence, took aim and fired. He
missed, but he got away.

Jonathan Harrington's cousin, Caleb, had gone into the meet-
inghouse for more powder with Joshua Simonds and Joseph
Comee. All three found themselves in danger of being cut off from
their company by the British. Caleb Harrington and Comee
decided to make a run for it. When he got outside, Comee found
that he was already separated from the militia to the north of the
meetinghouse by the first platoon of the British Tenth Infantry,
and the second platoon on his south side. Between two enemy
platoons, he made a lightning dash westward across the Common
to Marrett Munroe's house, running a gantlet of musket balls all
the way. One of the musket balls hit him in the arm, but he kept
going into the Munroe house and, right through it, out of the back
door. Caleb Harrington, headed in the same direction, did not
make it and was killed in the attempt. Joshua Simonds saw
Harrington fall and ducked back into the meetinghouse, sure that
a British platoon would be in after him. He lay down on the floor,
stuck the muzzle of his gun into a barrel of powder and, keeping his
eyes on the door, waited to pull the trigger and blow the place up
when the British entered.

Joshua Simonds came closer than he knew to blowing up the
meetinghouse. While Pitcairn had thus far borne the whole burden

136

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

of the aff air for the British, with the recalcitrant infantrymen act-
ing like members of a mob, the portly Lieutenant Colonel Smith,
whose own regiment's company of light infantry was first on the
Common, was, of course, late. He said afterward that he was back
in the line of march somewhere and, apparently after hearing the
firing, hurried up to the head of the column. By then the men of
his own regiment were firing indiscriminately, paying no attention
to the officers or their orders. The sight of the chaotic firing,
shouting, and random running around of the soldiers, with the
officers vainly bellowing orders, seemed to have an arousing eff ect
upon the Lieutenant Colonel. "I endeavored to the utmost to stop
all further firing, which in a short time I effected.' 519 Lieutenant
Sutherland, whose commandeered provincial horse had darted
away at the first shots, got back to the Common by the time that
Smith got there and noted how Smith got the troops to cease
firing: "On my coming up, Colonel Smith turned to me, asked
me, do you know where a drummer is, which I found, who im-
mediately beat to arms, when the men ceased firing." 20

Smith then noted, with some horror as though he recognized
the wild mood of his troops, that groups of them were about to try-
to force their way into the dwellings around the Common,
Buckman's Tavern, and the meetinghouse, where Joshua Simonds
lay with the muzzle of his loaded gun stuck in the barrel of powder
ready to make a resounding understatement of Smith's com-
ment that he knew "if the houses were once broke into, none within
could well be saved." 21

Smith unquestionably was the man who salvaged what was left
of a situation he should have avoided. The men of the Tenth
Regiment recognized their own colonel and were suddenly sobered
into listening to orders, and the impersonal beat of the drum
brought about an automatic reaction. In his analysis of the
episode, however, Smith was silly in his overeagerness to sound
like a highly successful officer merely because he finally stopped
his own troops from rioting; and he seemed not to know very

137

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

much about the real facts of the action. "The troops then near the
meetinghouse and dwellings, much enraged at the treatment they
had received [during the entire encounter one British soldier had
been nicked in the leg] and having been fired on from the houses
repeatedly [there were no armed men in any of the houses, except
for the few seconds that it took Joseph Comee to race through
Marrett Munroe's house away from the Common], were going to
break them open to come at those within ; though they deserved no
favor ... I was desirous of putting a stop to all further slaughter
of those deluded people, therefore gave orders, and by the
assistance of some of the officers prevented any one house being
entered." 22

By the time the firing ceased, the grenadiers had come up, and
Smith's whole force of seven hundred men swarmed over the
Common and the roads around it. Not a provincial, except those
lying dead or wounded on the ground, was in sight. Probably there
was some careful peering through the windows of the houses and
taverns or from behind trees in the surrounding fields. But the
Common and the roads bordering it was a mass of scarlet coats,
as the officers attempted to get the men back in some sort of order.
"We then formed on the Common," said Lieutenant Barker, "but
with some difficulty ... we waited a considerable time there." 23

Both Smith and Pitcairn, who ought to have been aware of the
vast implications of their morning's work, appeared before the
ranks and dressed them down for "the too great warmth of the
soldiers in not attending to their officers, and keeping their ranks,"
and they urged "a more steady conduct to them in the future." 24
But Smith and Pitcaim were army officers and not politicians or
diplomats, and their assignment was to march to Concord and
destroy the stores there. So they had the troops replenish their
cartridge boxes and, before marching off the Common and down
the road toward Concord, allowed them to fire a victory volley
and shout out the three cheers traditional in the British army after

138

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

a successful engagement. This irritated the Reverend Jonas
Clarke more than even the wanton destruction of life had: "how
far it was expressive of bravery, heroism, and true military
glory * . . must be submitted to the impartial world to judge." 25

Hi

Scunying with John Hancock from their woodland hideout
where Sergeant Munroe had taken them, Samuel Adams heard
the sound of gunfire floating out over the early morning quiet of
the country. His reaction was exultant, although he did not know
who was being killed. "O, what a glorious morning is this," he
exclaimed. Hancock, annoyed by the physical discomfort of life
in the woods, said he thought it was a strange time to comment
on the weather. "I mean what a glorious morning for America,"
Adams said, and the town of Lexington later adopted it as a legend
for the town seal. The agitator was not without a sense of ceremony
when the occasion called for it.

When the British moved on toward Concord, not more than half
an hour after they had rushed onto Lexington Common and had
shown no interest whatsoever in Adams and Hancock, the latter
were on their way to their next refuge the Thomas Jones house in
Woburn. At this point, Hancock, who unlike Adams was seeing
all the events of the day in terms only of his own affairs, thought
of his aunt and his fiancee back at Jonas Clarke's house. He sent a
messenger to them, telling them to get a carriage and join him at
Woburn. He also directed them "to bring the fine salmon that they
had had sent to them for dinner." 26

Aunt Lydia and Dorothy had watched the fighting from an
upstairs window in Clarke's house, though they could have seen
little more than the puffs of smoke from the shots, had seen the
first wounded brought in, and had helped bundle off to safer places
the smaller Clarke children. Now they got the carriage and brought
John Hancock his salmon. Hancock got into an argument with

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Dorothy Quincy about her proposal to return to Boston, where
her father was; and she was getting the better of the argument
("Recollect, Mr. Hancock, I am not under your control yet. I
shall go to my father/' 27 ) when Aunt Lydia stepped in and settled
the dispute.

However glorious the morning to Adams and to America, it
was becoming a nuisance to Hancock. The salmon was all cooked
and just being sliced, when a self-appointed messenger burst in
with the misinformation that the British were marching from
Lexington to Woburn. The whole party, including a now under-
standably silent Adams, whose agile mind must already have been
planning the uses of the yet unfinished day's events, moved on to a
third refuge in Billerica.

Back in Lexington there was the pressing business of getting aid
to the wounded and the sad business of cleaning up after death
had come. From a slight hill beyond the swampy ground north of
the Common, the men, silent at first and perhaps a little dazed,
came drifting back to the Common they had fled a few minutes
earlier. Doors of houses opened, and the women came out, followed
by puzzled children, to help the wounded, to find their husbands,
to take the necessary census of the dead. Dr. Fiske and his son, Dr.
Joseph, Junior, came and bandaged wounds. Eight men in all
seven of Captain Parker's company and the unfortunate chance
captive from Wobum, lay dead, most of them shot in the back as
they were dispersing. Nine men were wounded. Of the eight
father-and-son combinations who stood together half an hour
earlier, five were broken by death two fathers and three sons
killed. Of all the men who had responded to William Diamond's
drum call to arms, nearly a third were casualties.

Then it dawned on all the living that sooner or later the British
would have to come back through Lexington. Children were
evacuated from all the houses lining the main route from Concord
to Boston through the town. Family silver and the communion

140

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

service from the meetinghouse were buried or hidden. Late arriving
minutemen from the outlying areas began to appear on the Com-
mon. A solitary British soldier came walking by the meetinghouse.
A minuteman from Wobum went up to him, demanded his
surrender, and disarmed him. One by one, five other British
soldiers stragglers, willing prisoners, looters were picked up,
disarmed, and sent off to Wobum for safekeeping.

When the British marched off, of course, they left behind them
the unhappy sequela of wars from the beginning all the personal
and human debris of sudden bereavement and new uncertainties.

In Jonas Clarke's house, which except for the Common itself
was the most active place in Lexington that day, there was
among the twelve children one wondering little girl of twelve.
Sixty-six years later, it was all still very real to her everything
that did not get into the orations and the textbooks. In 1841, full
of memories, and the last of the Hancocks and Clarkes to live in
the old house, Elizabeth Clarke sent a remarkable portrait of the
day, a primitive in words, to her niece:

Lexington, April igth, 1841
My dear niece Lucy Allen:

Miss Colton offers to take a line to you, and, as your little girl
did not stay or come to this house only to give us your letter which,
with the sincerest joy we read and have lived on the hope you gave
us that you would come up to this old House and look on us old
Beings, a house and Happy, Happy home and many worthy men
and women have been the inhabitants and oh! Lucy, how many
descendants can I count from the venerable Hancock down to this
day which is sixty-six years since the war began on the Common
which I now can see from this window as here I sit writing, and
can see, in my mind, just as plain, all the British troops marching
off the Common to Concord, and the whole scene, how Aunt
Hancock and Miss Dolly Quinsy, with their cloaks and bonnets on,
Aunt crying and wringing her hands and helping Mother Dress

141

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

the children, Dolly going round with Father, to hide Money,
watches and anything down in the potatoes and up garrett, and
then Grandfather Clarke sent down men with carts, took your
Mother and all the children but Jonas and me and Sally a Babe
six months old. Father sent Jonas down to Grandfather Cook's to
see who was killed and what their condition was and, in the after-
noon, Father, Mother with me and the Baby went to the Meeting
House, there was the eight men that was killed, seven of them my
Father's parishioners, one from Wo burn, all in Boxes made of four
large Boards Nailed up and, after Pa had prayed, they were put
into two horse carts and took into the grave yard where your
Grandfather and some of the Neighbors had made a large trench,
as near the Woods as possible and there we followed the bodies of
those first slain, Father, Mother, I and the Baby, there I stood and
there I saw them let down into the ground, it was a little rainey but
we waited to see them Covered up with the Clods and then for fear
the British should find them, my Father thought some of the men
had best Cut some pine or oak bows and spread them on their place
of burial so that it looked like a heap of Brush . . .

The extraordinary circumstance that I should be the only one of
this Family who should witness the first Burial of the first slain of
the war between Great Britain and America and Be not only
continued in Life but on the same spot of Earth and in the same
house where the first Patriots in the Country was at that period.,
Hancock and Adams and Father who was known 03 a superior
Wlgg, superior minister, a Highly respectable Man, uncommon in
his intellectual faculties and, above all, a Christian, who sewed his
Lord and Master,, was faith-full to his People, gave his strength to
labour for his Family, his hours of Rest to his pen so that his
People's soulls should not be neglected, but Lucy, I shall tire you
with my relations , . . in this my long life . . .

/ think of so many things that I Jumble them up in such bad
writing that you will have hard work to read, my hands tremble

142

THE BATTLE: LEXINGTON

and my Eyes are very sore lately, do pray read with patience
perhaps my Last Letter for I am full of years. . . .

Your Aged Aunt Eliza 28

Later on the morning of April nineteenth. Captain Parker re-
assembled his Lexington minutemen, to inarch toward Concord.
Some of the wounded, now bandaged, formed in awkward but
determined lines. Among them was Jedediah Munroe, the old
man who had fallen on the Common before he could shoot and
who had brought along the old Scotch claymore as an extra
weapon. William Diamond beat his drum again. The little com-
pany marched off toward Concord, the beat of the drum and the
thin music of the fife echoing briefly after them. And this was
perhaps Lexington's saddest and most triumphant moment of the
whole day the sun now high in the sky, the smell of British gun-
powder still in the air, their dead brothers lying on the Common
behind, and the company of minutemen, knowing now what they
faced, marching off to meet the enemy again.

5
THE BATTLE: CONCORD

"The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground,
but the light of it Jills the horizon. . . ."

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1

Two eighteenth century villages, five miles apart, some eleven
and sixteen miles from Boston, each with its meetinghouse, its neat
and handsome clapboard houses, its pastures and farms and quiet
ways yet Lexington and Concord had stamped on them wholly
different personalities.

Concord was the larger of the two with its fifteen hundred
souls, twice the size of Lexington in population and richer. It was
also somewhat freer in disposition, a little farther removed in
temperament from the homogeneity and unrelieved orthodoxy
that characterized Lexington, a little more sophisticated in a way,
a community of lighter mood, more diverse opinion, more in-
habitants who spoke their own minds and came to their own
conclusions. There were Tories in Concord, too, although they
were a very small and untolerated minority. One of them, Daniel
Bliss, a lawyer, entertained Captain Brown and Ensign de
Bemiere when they went to Concord in March to report to Gage on

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WILLIAM DIAMOND 9 S DRUM

the roads. Mr. Bliss was forced by his neighbors to leave town with
the soldiers; he never returned, and his estate was confiscated.
Concord's other Tories refrained from overt acts, but they let their
opinions be known. The town lacked the unanimity of Lexington.

For, where Lexington had felt the unifying and also the
restraining effect of two powerful personalities, old Bishop Han-
cock and his successor Jonas Clarke (their consecutive ministries
in the village covered a hundred and four years) , Concord had a
seething ecclesiastical history in a day when the ecclesiastical life
of a community was almost its whole life and most certainly its
political, social, and cultural life. The effervescent people of
Concord had thrown out some of their ministers, split into
separate parishes, hauled their clergy up on charges, feuded over
Whitefield's "Great Awakening" revival movement, and generally
behaved as if they were running, or attempting to run, the parish
instead of letting the parish run them. Indeed, as far back as the
16405, during the ascendancy of the Puritan theocracy, when such
things were extraordinarily rare, one Concord citizen, of positive
views, Ambrose Martin, arose and publicly declared that in his
judgment the church covenant was "a stinking carrion and a
human invention." 2 Martin was fined 10, a huge sum then, for
expressing his opinion of the basic mystique of the Puritan state.
Like most people of the time, he did not have any such amount of
cash; so the authorities seized some of his property and sold it for
20, Martin refused to accept payment of the surplus, to which
he was entitled, and even when he hit upon bad times he held out
for the whole amount. It is significant of the spirit of Concord ( and
it would have been inconceivable in Lexington) that fifteen of his
townsmen, including the two clergymen of the town, petitioned
the dour Puritan Governor John Endicott to give Martin the whole
20. Endicott said that Martin's distress was due entirely to his
own obstinacy and that he could get the surplus on the sale of his
property, and not a penny more, whenever he saw fit to call for it.

In the following century, old Bishop Hancock spent a consider-

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THE BATTLE; CONCORD

able part of his time going from Lexington to Concord to preside
over emergency sessions of church councils that were convened to
arbitrate some rebellion in the Concord church, which finally split
into two parishes. Concord's controversies resulted in the decline
of the clergy as an influence in town, affairs, and Jonas Clarke's
contemporary, the Reverend William Emerson, did riot hold a
position of any comparable authority in the town at all.

The differences of character in the towns of Lexington and
Concord were clearly reflected in the happenings of April nine-
teenth, 1 775. The outward context of events was, of course, wholly
different, too. The sun was fully up, and so was the entire popula-
tion, when the British started moving toward Concord. There was
no secrecy, no stealth, no quiet, no wild dashing around of riders.
The morning was bright and clear. The British columns of scarlet
and white, its drums beating and fif es whistling,, were moving, full
of confidence, into the eastern part of the town. The provincials
had turned out to be hopelessly irresolute or astonishingly bad
marksmen or numerically insignificant. The British troops were
now nearing their real objective, could readily get it over with, and
get back to their barracks for a good night's sleep.

In Concord, however, events had been moving since one o'clock
that morning, when young Dr. Prescott escaped the British patrol
and warned the Concord militia, having paused on the way to
alarm the Lincoln minutemen, too. "This morning between one
and two o'clock we were alarmed by the ringing of the bell," wrote
William Emerson, the Concord pastor. Unlike Clarke, however,
Emerson's sole function was to grab his musket and run to the
rendezvous at Wright's Tavern. Emerson's job was that of a
member of the Alarm List and nothing more; his pride was in
being the first to arrive, although he was by no means the nearest
to Wright's Tavern. After the militia had assembled, they arranged
for a signal to reassemble on the approach of the British, sent
messengers to alert other communities, and dispersed to help
the other townspeople hide as much of the remaining stores as they

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WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

could before the British got there. Concord had two companies of
minutemen, and another from neighboring Lincoln, to receive
the British.

As the morning neared daybreak, a scout was sent to Lexington
and returned shortly to report that there was firing on Lexington
Common; but he told Major John Buttrick, then commanding the
minutemen, that he did not wait to see whether bullets were being
fired or just gunpowder. On this intelligence, the minutemen re-
assembled and held a council of war all with complete calm and
no impulsiveness at all. There were about two hundred and fifty
of them, all armed. Amos Barrett said, after conferring, that "we
thought we would go and meet the British." 3 The three companies
fell in line, and they marched down the road toward Lexington,
their drums beating and fifes playing, "to meet the British."

The British were, of course, marching from Lexington toward
them seven hundred regulars marching in one direction and two
hundred and fifty provincial militia in the other on the narrow
Lexington-Concord road. "We marched down toward Lexington
about a mile or a mile and a half, and we saw them coming. We
halted and stayed until they got within about a hundred rods,"
Barrett reported. Then Major Buttrick's force executed a startling
movement for one of two opposing forces that had just met. "We
were ordered to the about face and marched before them [the
British] with our drums and fifes going and also the British. We
had grand music." 4 Amos Barrett did well to note the novelty and
splendor of this scene. After seven o'clock in the morning now,
here along a narrow country road came a variously garbed group
of two hundred and fifty countrymen, marching along with
muskets and their fifes and drums. One hundred rods behind them
marched the seven hundred British soldiers, their fifes and drums
adding to the grand music.

As the British entered Concord, they found themselves on less
felicitous terrain than they had at Lexington. Rising steeply on
their right was a long ridge of varying height but of sufficient steep-

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THE BATTLE: CONCORD

ness to command the road all the way into the center of Concord.
Along this ridge newly arrived minutemen were already peering
down at the British forces and could have fired as they pleased,
without any danger of return fire. Lieutenant Colonel Smith sent
his light infantry off the roadway and up onto the ridge; and the
minutemen who had been there hurried back along the ridge to the
center of Concord. The grenadiers continued to march along the
roadway. Thus the British force arrived in the center of Concord
at about eight o'clock in the morning, finally ready to carry out
the object of the mission that got them up from their bunks at nine
o'clock the night before. Under the procrastinating command of
Colonel Smith, they had taken eleven hours to come seventeen
miles, and his troops had so conducted themselves that the whole
point of the mission was now irrelevant anyhow. All that was
left for the hapless colonel that day was so to manage what was
left of it as to convert failure to disaster. This he achieved. For,
unencumbered by policy decisions or, in any case, by the presence
of those who could make them, Colonel James Barrett, the com-
manding officer of the Concord militia. Major John Buttrick,
his second in command, and their fellow officers made their
decisions on purely military grounds.

To begin with, they kept their militia out of easy reach of the
British and always in positions where they themselves had the
advantage of observation and striking power. Concord was as
much a town of hills as Lexington for the most part was of plains.
Before the advancing British, the minutemen moved from one
ridge to another, while all the time their number was being
swollen by new companies from nearby towns. When the com-
panies of minutemen who had made up the strange procession
with the British with all the music got back to Concord center,
they found the Alarm Company the men too old for the duty
of minutemen on a hill across from the meetinghouse. The
combined provincial forces then withdrew from this ridge, over-
looking the little group of public buildings hi the heart of the

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WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

town, to a second ridge, from which they could both look down
on the town and see out across some meadows to William
Emerson's manse, the Concord River, and the North Bridge across
it that led to Colonel Barrett's farm, where some of the munitions
were hidden. From this height, they watched the light infantry
come down from the ridge that they themselves had just left,
and the taller, heavier-armed grenadiers form at ease along the
roads converging in the town. Smith and Pitcaim mounted the
first ridge and, from the town burial ground, surveyed the country-
side, Smith studying the map that Gage had given him and
Pitcaim looking through a glass to determine the distribution of
the provincial militia that might still be scattered around the town.

Meanwhile, the militia was holding a council of war on their
ridge. Emerson, the young pastor, of a somewhat evangelical
sort compared to the rationalist, Clarke, was all for "making
a stand, notwithstanding the superiority of their number." "Let
us stand our ground/ 3 he said. "If we die, let us die here." But
this wasn't Lexington, and Emerson wasn't Clarke. He got dis-
agreement from the more venturesome ("Let us go and meet
them") and from the more prudent ("No, it will not do for us
to begin the war" ) . Emerson himself reported that the prudent
won: ". . . but others more prudent thought best to retreat till
our strength should be equal to the enemy's by recruits from
neighboring towns that were continuingly coming in to our
assistance. Accordingly, we retreated over the [North] bridge." 5
This was to be the most important decision of the day by the
provincial militia at Concord. It put them on the west or far
side of the river, "on a hill not far from the bridge where we could
see and hear what was going on." 6 It also* put them where they
would not be separated from the minutemen that now started
streaming in from towns to the west of Concord until there were
some four hundred there.

Lieutenant Colonel Smith now divided his forces. He kept the
grenadiers in the town on the east side of the Concord River, and

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THE BATTLE: CONCORD

they were deployed all around, searching for the stores and de-
stroying any that they came upon. Of his ten companies of light
infantry, he sent one to guard the South Bridge over the Concord
Elver to the southwest of the town, presumably to stop any militia
from crossing it and to search for any stores that might be there.
But the North Bridge was the important one, for Smith knew that
considerable parts of the provincial stores were concealed on
Colonel Barrett's farm beyond it. So he dispatched seven of his
light infantry companies to the North Bridge, over which the
militia had just withdrawn.

With all the militia across the North Bridge the grenadiers had
the town to themselves, and Lieutenant Colonel Smith, who should
have been in command at the key and vulnerable position at the
bridge (the only possible place where there could be contact with
the provincial militia), stayed with the grenadiers, directing then-
operation. He kept Pitcairn, his second in command, with him,
too, having dispatched the infantry companies to the bridge under
the command only of one of their captains.

The search and destruction of the stores in the town went along
in a peaceable way. Having been lectured by their officers on the
conduct of the light infantry at Lexington, the huge grenadiers
went about their business almost gently and for their pains missed
as much contraband as they found. Forbidden to terrify the in-
habitants, mostly women and old men left in the town, they
went along almost eagerly with the most specious diversionary
tactics of the inhabitants.

Timothy Wheeler, whose ancestors were among the original
settlers of Concord, hit upon a method of deceiving the grenadiers
by telling the truth. He had stored in his barn a large supply of
provincial flour for the use of the militia; near it he carefully
stacked a few bags of his own flour. With the grenadiers he adopted
a tone of patient forebearance as if they were particularly back-
ward schoolboys. He put his hand on the bag of his own flour
and said, "This is my flour . . . This is the flour of wheat; this is

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

the flour of corn; this is the flour of rye. This is my flour; this is
my wheat; this is my rye; this is mine. 55 And every bag that he
touched was literally his own. The grenadier left, assuring Wheeler
that "we do not injure private property. 337

At the malt house of Ebenezer Hubbard, where more flour
was stored, they rolled the barrels out on the roadway, smashed
them apart, and scattered the flour over the ground. This, of
course, was rather picayune work to the heaviest chargers of the
King's infantry, and they sought to speed the trifling job up.
They threw most of the other casks of flour, the chief provision of
armies, into the mill pond. All of it was later retrieved by the
provincials, when it was discovered that the flour on the outer
edges of the casks had swollen and, caulking the seams, had sealed
the remainder up tight. The grenadiers were similarly impatient
with the confiscated musket balls, which General Gage, with a
curious attention to details, had suggested the soldiers put into
their pockets and scatter on their way home. The grenadiers
dumped hundreds of them into ponds, and the provincials just
hauled them out again the next day.

At the tavern of Ephraim Jones there was some exceptional
activity. In addition to being an innkeeper, Ephraim Jones, in an
appropriate merger of related professions, was also the jailkeeper.
Jones depended erroneously on force rather than ingenuity in han-
dling the soldiers. There were three twenty-four pounders con-
cealed in his jailyard. In his inn, which was conveniently adjacent,
was the chest of the Treasurer of the Provincial Congress, Henry
Gardner, who had seen fit to leave it in the room he had occupied
during the lately adjourned session. Jones bolted all the doors of
inn and jail and refused to let the grenadiers into either establish-
ment This was a delicate situation for the grenadiers, who were
duty-bound to be gentle and conciliatory. They sent for Major
Pitcaim to handle the deadlock. He ordered a door broken
down and went to the jailyard. There Jones stubbornly re-
fused to reveal where the cannon were buried. Since neither

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THE BATTLE: CONCORD

the jail premises nor the cannon were private property, Pitcairn
brandished his pistol, and Jones led him to the cannon.
But the inn was private property, and the grenadiers re-
spected the distinction. They got to Gardner's room and
found a young woman blocking the door. She insisted that
it was her room, that the chest was hers, and told them to go
away. They left. Jones was still being held at bayonet point in
the jailyard, but Pitcairn was satisfied to knock off the trunnions
of the cannon and destroy their carriages and then released Jones,
directing him to shift to the role of innkeeper and prepare the
major's breakfast Jones served the breakfast, rendered an exact
bill, and was paid by the major. It was the only show of violence
among those searching for stores in the town.

The British made a point of paying for everything demanded
for their personal convenience, and many a good descendant of
the Puritans had a difficult choice between indignantly and
patriotically scorning money and prudently accepting it with the
solid respect of good New England orthodoxy for the earth's
manna. Most of them resolved the dilemma by taking the money
after comments to the effect that it was probably contaminated.
Colonel Barrett's wife, who had the light infantry on her hands
for an hour or more, served them food and drink on their demand.
At first she refused payment with the remark that "we are com-
manded to feed our enemies." But they pressed the money on her,
tossing it into her lap, "This is the price of blood," she said ruefully,
and put the money in her pocket. 8 At Amos Wood's home the
British even offered to pay the ladies there for the inconvenience
caused them in searching the place, giving them each a guinea. The
women accepted the money; and told the officer that there was
only one room unavailable for the search because it was occupied
by an indisposed woman. The officer sternly forbade his men to go
near it. The room, of course, held the only military stores in the
whole Wood house.

In general, as the morning wore calmly on, the soldiers showed

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WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

more interest in food than in military supplies. If Barker was right
in his observation that, after standing around the Cambridge
flatlands for two hours while their rations were being brought to
them, the soldiers threw them away with characteristic contempt
for army food, they were really hungry by now. They had
marched all day, and they had a day's march ahead of them.
But as professional soldiers, they also knew that better food than
army salt pork could be had from foraging. In Concord they ate
well, getting heavy breakfasts of meat, milk, and potatoes from
their unwilling hosts. Once in a while, however, they got stem
lectures from the women or from old men on their behavior and
on the general colonial policy of the British Parliament. At the
gun shop of Samuel Barrett they found the ancient father of the
proprietor, Deacon Thomas Barrett, who took the occasion to
reprimand them seriously for the whole drift of events since the
Stamp Act. The soldiers after a while said teasingly they might
have to kill him for such rebellious sentiments, but the old deacon
won them over by pointing out that he was so old that if they
waited a little while they would be saved the trouble.

So far as the usefulness of the raid to the military security of
the King's troops in Boston went, it was, of course, a fiasco. The
patriots, in the three days following Revere's Sunday alert of
Adams and Hancock at Lexington, had effectively removed to
neighboring towns much of the material, and what was left that
the British could find and destroy could not possibly determine
the outcome of the occupation of Boston. Nevertheless, the grena-
diers in the town did what they could. They destroyed the cannon
they found, threw musket and cannon balls in ponds and wells,
chopped down the liberty pole, hacked up harness, burned gun
carriages, entrenchment tools, and the wooden trenchants and
spoons acquired for Samuel Adams' provincial army when he got
it. If they had not concluded to burn rather than just to smash the
wooden carriages and utensils, they might have departed in peace
for Boston, well fed and still without the loss or serious injury of a

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THE BATTLE: CONCORD

single man. After the horror of Lexington Common, things in
Concord were not going badly for Lieutenant Colonel Smith,

But at North Bridge, where Smith had sent the seven companies
of light infantry to hold the minutemen on the far side of the
river, tension was rapidly developing. From their vantage point,
on the hill beyond the bridge, the provincial militia watched the
British infantry as Captain Parsons of the Tenth Regiment, in
command of the detachment, deployed his men.

11

Captain Parsons had thrust upon him decisions that his limited
experience had not equipped him to make. When he first marched
down to North Bridge, he had had six companies under his
command; shortly after he arrived at the bridge, a seventh com-
pany, the Welch Fusiliers, joined his force. Since a British company
of the time had twenty-eight men, Parsons had altogether one
hundred and ninety-six men. Before him on the hill two hundred
yards away was the whole strength of the provincial militia that
had arrived some four hundred, including the minutemen who
had marched so gallantly down the Lexington road earlier that
morning "to meet the British/' only to execute the remarkable
about-face and serve as the escort of the British right into Concord,

Outnumbered two to one at the bridge, Parsons was faced with
an even more serious dilemma. He had two assignments from
Lieutenant Colonel Smith. One was to secure the bridge, and
the other was to go on to search Colonel Barrett's farm, two miles
beyond the bridge, the alleged chief depository of provincial arms
and stores. He had to keep enough of his troops at the bridge to
hold it. On the other hand, he had to send enough men to Barrett's
to fight off the militia if it followed them or to cope with any pro-
vincial forces that they might encounter on the way to Barrett's.
Parsons probably thought he was avoiding a difficult decision by
splitting his forces nearly evenly. First, he marched all seven com-

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WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

panics across the bridge. One of these he left at the western end of
the bridge, so that they stood with their backs to it as they faced the
colonial militia on the nearby hill twenty-eight men, their backs
to a river, facing four hundred. Two more companies, fifty-six men,
Parsons placed some distance apart on some low hills along the
road to Barrett's and about a quarter of a mile from the bridge.
He turned all three of these companies over to the command of
Captain Walter Laurie of the Forty-third Regiment, and he
marched away to Colonel Barrett's farm with the other four to
seize and destroy the munitions.

Watching all this, the minutemen made no move to interfere
with the British. They just watched and waited, two hundred
yards from the British company guarding the bridge and perhaps
four hundred from the two British companies stationed on the
low hills down the road to Barrett's. One minuteman decided to
negotiate. "J ames Nichols, of Lincoln, who was an Englishman
and a droll fellow and a fine singer, said, 'If any of you wiU hold
my gun, I will go down and talk to them.' Some of them held his
gun, and he went down alone to the British soldiers at the bridge
and talked to them some time. Then he came back and took his
gun and said he was going home. . . ." 9

The constantly complaining Lieutenant Barker, of the King's
Own Regiment, at the bridge, did not like the situation at all.
"During this time," he wrote, "the people were gathering together
in great numbers and, taking advantage of our scattered dis-
position, seemed as if they were going to cut off the communi-
cations with the bridge. . . ." 10

Then on the hill where the four hundred armed provincials
minutemen supplemented by other militia, including such vener-
able men as eighty-year-old Josiah Haynes of Sudbury looked
down on the three companies of light infantry guarding the bridge,
the smoke from the bonfires that Smith's grenadiers had lighted
in the town of Concord was noticed. The provincials held another
war conference: apparently the British were setting fire to the

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THE BATTLE: CONCORD

town, and many of these men had left their families back at
their houses. Joseph Hosmer, lieutenant of one of the Concord
minutemen companies, acting as adjutant of all the forces, put a
question to the group of officers, town officials, armed farmers,
and tradesmen around him: "Will you let them bum the town
down? 3511 The answer was a concerted "No, 53 and the group
agreed that they would march back over the bridge to the town
and put a stop to the burning. Colonel Barrett told the men to
load their guns, gave them "strict orders not to fire till they [the
British soldiers guarding the bridge] fired first, then to fire as fast
as we could. 3312

The four hundred provincial militia started moving down from
their position toward Captain Laurie's single company of thirty-
five men at the bridge. The junior officers of both this company
and the two somewhat ahead of the bridge started worried con-
ferences on what they should do next. With no one really effectively
in command they acted on their own to correct the extraordinary
jeopardy in which Parsons had left them.

Ensign Lister of the Tenth Regiment's company, one of the two
stationed by Parsons on the hills a quarter of a mile west of the
bridge, said, "We had not been long in this situation when we saw
a large body of men drawn up with the greatest regularity and ap-
proached us seemingly with an intent to attack, when Lieutenant
Kelly, who then commanded our company, with myself thought
it most proper to retire from our situation and join the Fourth's
company [the second of the two companies left by Parsons on the
low hills across the river], which we did. They still approached and
in that [such] force that it was thought proper by the officers ex-
cept myself to join the Forty-third's company at Concord Bridge
commanded by Captain Laurie." Lister objected to the with-
drawing back to the company at the bridge, because of the terrain
between them and the bridge: they would have to descend, under
the provincials' muskets, "a steepish hill" where they could be fired
upon but could not fire back. "However, I was over-ruled." 1 *

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WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Lieutenant Sutherland, the venturesome volunteer, meanwhile
had left the bridge "exceedingly vexed 33 that Captain Parsons had
gone along to Barrett's without him and started out to catch up
with him. But he was too late. The provincials were coming down
the hill and since "it struck me it would be disgraceful to be taken
by such rascals/ 3 he raced back to the bridge, where he joined
Captain Laurie. 14

The three companies were now together at the bridge as the
militia came toward them, but they were still in the indefensible
position of being on the far side of the bridge with the river at
their back and only a narrow footbridge over which to withdraw.
The provincials were now within three hundred yards. Lieutenant
Sutherland, who seemed to be one of those zealous and capable
officers whom everyone trusted, was consulted by Captain Laurie,
who "was kind enough to ask me, Was it not better to acquaint
Colonel Smith of this. I told him by all means, as their disposition
appeared to be very regular and determined, on which he sent
Lieutenant Robertson to Colonel Smith; who returned to us in
a very little time with Captain Lumm, who told us Colonel Smith
would send us a re-inforcement immediately. Captain Lumm very
obligingly galloped back as hard as he could to hasten the reinforce-
ment 3315

Now the provincial militia were almost upon them, and Laurie
at last recognized the vulnerability of his position and recrossed
the bridge, barely having time to get his hundred men across. They
were now in the right position to stop the approaching provincials
from crossing, but they were far too late to form properly for the
job. As for the reinforcements, Colonel Smith was, of course,
late in getting them there. With complete disregard for Captain
Parsons and the four companies who had gone to Barrett's, Ensign
Lister proposed tearing up the planks of the bridge, and Lieutenant
Sutherland and some others actually did get a few torn loose; but
the approach of the militia stopped them. If they had succeeded,

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THE BATTLE: CONCORD

of course. Parsons would have been isolated on the far side of the
river.

While all the other officers of the three companies were attempt-
ing to improve their prospects, the disapproving Lieutenant
Barker of the King's Own apparently took the view that the whole
mess was no worse than might be expected. "Captain Laurie, who
commanded then these companies, sent to Colonel Smith, begging
he would send more troops to his assistance and informing him of
his situation; the Colonel ordered two or three companies but put
himself at their head, by which means [he] stopped them from
being [in] time enough, for being a very fat heavy man he would
not have reached the bridge in half an hour, though it was not
half a mile to it; in the meantime, the rebels marched into the
road and were coming down upon us, when Captain Laurie made
Ms men retire to this side of the bridge (which, by the bye, he
ought to have done at first, and then he would have had time to
make a good disposition, but at this time, he had not, for the
rebels got so near him that his people were obliged to form the best
way they could) ," 16 The fact that Barker was right made him no
more helpful at the time, when Laurie needed all the help that he
could get.

The columns marching down toward the disturbed company
officers was the first American aimy under a unified commander
ever to take the field. The variegated brigade was made up of six
companies of minutemen two from Concord and one each from
the adjacent towns of Bedford, Lincoln, Acton, and Carlisle, the
Concord militia made up of older men and others not in the
minutemen companies, and individual minutemen from neigh-
boring Westford, Chelmsf ord, and Littleton. They marched down
to the bridge in a long line in ranks of two, the old men in the rear
and the Acton company with its energetic young captain, Isaac
Davis, at the head. With him was Major John Buttrick of the
Concord company. In the rear, still on a rise where he could see the
whole column, was Colonel Barrett, mounted, and repeating his

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WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

order not to begin the firing. As this column neared the bridge,
Buttrick shouted to the withdrawing British to stop tearing up the
planks. They did stop, not in obedience to Buttrick, but because
of the proximity of his force.

Captain Laurie, across the river, was trying to get his com-
panies in a proper defensive position. As it was, the hundred men
were all massed at the east end of the bridge, making an excellent
and compact target and unable to raise their muskets to fire
without bayoneting their own comrades. Laurie ordered the troops
of two companies to align themselves in columns for street firing,
an infantry innovation at the time, in which the soldiers seemed
poorly drilled and with which even the critical Lieutenant Barker
seemed wholly unfamiliar. The technique required the company to
face the enemy in ranks of four or more and to the depth of eight
or less ranks. After the first rank fired, it split and wheeled around
to the rear, where it would prime and reload its muskets while the
second and following ranks fired. In a tactical retreat the rank,
after it fired, just continued marching to the rear, stopping only
when it was its turn to fire again. This was what Laurie had in
mind, although he failed to realize that the country road with an
open meadow on each side was not a city street and offered neither
reason nor advantage to street fighting. In fact, it offered distinct
hazards, because in the absence of protective buildings character-
istic of city streets, any enemy could easily flank and surround the
street firing squads. Lister apparently thought of this, for he
ordered the third company to extend their line along the river
bank. Except for the first few squads who stood ready at the edge
of the bridge for the street firing, however, nobody seemed to pay
much attention to Captain Laurie's orders. The ubiquitous and
always helpful Lieutenant Sutherland, seeing Laurie's plight,
jumped over a stone wall into a meadow belonging to Emerson's
house and shouted to the men of the third company to follow him.
No better disciplined than they had been on Lexington Common,
none of them did except three men. Then the shooting began

164

THE BATTLE: CONCORD

and as at Lexington no one knew who started it, although
Captain Laurie, who gave no order to fire, said that "I imagine
myself that a man of my company (afterwards killed) did first fire
Ms piece." 17 Sutherland, who was hit in the shoulder, said the
provincials did, and Ensign Lister also implied that the provincials
did. But the probability is that three or four of the British troops,
on their own initiative, fired first, and their shots fell into the river.

At this time Captain Davis and his companions of the Acton
company were only fifty or sixty yards from the British. Then the
British fired a volley. "God damn it, they are firing ball !" Captain
Timothy Brown of Concord swore bitterly; and Amos Barrett, who
enjoyed the "grand music' 3 so much, wrote, with his customary
appreciation of the phonic details of warfare, "The balls whistled
well. We were then all ordered to fire that could fire and not kill
our own men. 3 ' 18

On the first British volley the intrepid Captain Davis and one
of his men of the Acton Company were killed and the young Acton
fifer wounded. Major Buttrick immediately gave the provincial
order to fire, in something less than clipped military terms : "Fire,
fellow-soldiers, for God's sake, fire!" 19 Most of the provincials
fired, letting loose a rain of bullets on the British troops, two of
whom were killed and several wounded. After scattered return
fire the British turned and ran toward Concord, "in spite of all
that could be done to prevent them," according to Captain Laurie,
who would have been thoroughly justified in giving up any am-
bition for an army career.

The retreating light infantrymen were halfway from the bridge
to the center of Concord when they encountered fat Lieutenant
Colonel Smith, with a company of grenadiers, coining to their
assistance. He was, as at Boston Common for the embarkation, at
Cambridge for the march, at Lexington for the massacre, so late
in getting there that irreparable damage to the expedition was
already done. He marched his grenadiers back to Concord with

165

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

the unhappy light infantry and then loitered about Concord for
two hours, while minutemen from all over Middlesex county
swarmed to Concord to harass his eventual retreat. He did nothing
at all about the three companies, under Captain Parsons, who were
still across the river at Barrett's farm. For all he knew or apparently
cared, the provincials could have destroyed the bridge and isolated
Parsons' companies deep in enemy territory, or they could simply
be waiting in ambush to destroy Parsons' men as they returned
from Barrett's to cross the bridge. The British dead were left at
the bridge, and some of the wounded were also left behind to get
back to the village as best they could. "When I got over," Amos
Barrett wrote, "there were two dead, and another almost dead.
There were eight or ten that were wounded and a running and a
hobbling about, looking back to see if we were after them." 20

The provincials were not after them or any other British at the
time. After routing the British at the bridge, some of them re-
crossed the bridge, picked up their dead and wounded, and went
to a nearby farm. Others stayed on the town side of the river but
instead of following the retreating British into town went up a
hill and, deploying themselves behind a stone wall, kept watch over
the road. The bridge, about which all the fighting had occurred,
was almost deserted. A wounded British soldier tried to crawl out
of the roadway to the grass beside it, when a country boy came
along and, with a hatchet, split the fallen man's head open. "The
poor object lived an hour or two before he expired," William
Emerson wrote a fellow cleric. 21 When Parsons with his three
companies, unmolested by the victorious provincials and aban-
doned by the British commander, came back over the bridge, they
were startled by the sight of the bloodily hacked head of the
soldier. As soon as they got to the village, a rumor started spreading
all through the British forces that the provincials were scalping
their captives a rumor that was to have a heavy bearing on the
long and slaughterous afternoon that still stretched out ahead.

1 66

THE BATTLE: CONCORD

in

After successfully forcing the bridge, after sending three com-
panies of British light infantry and one of grenadiers in full retreat,
and after isolating three other companies on the far side of the river,
the provincials did nothing to press their advantage. Their purpose
in forcing the bridge, of course, was to get to the town and prevent
its burning. But by now the smoke had died down and been
revealed for what it was, the burning of some of the confiscated
stores. Thoughts of the other ten grenadier companies still in the
village may have restrained the provincials from pressing the
retreat of the light infantry farther. Fear of reprisal may have
stopped them from destroying the isolated companies of Parsons
while the main force was still in town. Whatever their reasoning,
the provincials did nothing, except to find a meal somewhere,
during the two-hour interval between the end of the fight at the
bridge and the British departure from Concord. Captain Parsons,
unaware of the fight at the bridge and innocent of his perilous
situation from the beginning, had stopped his companies at a
tavern for drinks. As he returned leisurely over the bridge, he was
astonished to see some planks loose and even more astonished to
see the dead soldiers.

Lieutenant Colonel Smith seemed unable to make up his
mind what to do and formed his troops into line, dismissed them,
reformed them, marched them a few yards in one direction and
then in another. Possibly he wanted to remind the provincials
that his forces were still there, still a threat, while he hoped that
the reinforcements that he had asked from Gage, some ten hours
earlier, would get to him before he had to begin the hazardous
seventeen-mile march back to Boston in what was obviously now a
thoroughly aroused and belligerent countryside. CharacteristicaEy,
however, he simply delayed while the steady arrival of more
minutemen from remoter towns made his eventual march more
and more dangerous.

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

Colonel Barrett of the provincials, meanwhile, no longer had a
unified command. With the independence and casual attitudes
that were to characterize the colonial militia even later during
Washington's leadership, the minutemen all made their own deci-
sions about what to do next, and they wandered off in all direc-
tions not by any means abandoning the day's fighting but ob-
viously intending to resume as occasion arose later. There is no
question that their company commanders would have responded
to any call for a consultation by Barrett, but there was none. They
simply kept watchful eyes on the British from a distance and deter-
mined that they would see that there was no further destruction
of life and property in Concord. In the meantime, as they waited
for the British to move, time was on their side: their numbers
would inevitably be increased, and they could have the advantage
of a running fight.

1 68

6
THE BATTLE: RETREAT

"

The country was an amazing strong one.,
full of hills, woods, stone walls. . . ."

LT. JOHN BARKER, KING ? S OWN REGIMENT 1

At noon on April nineteenth Captain John Parker was marching
his company of minutemen down the Concord road. Jonathan
Harrington (whose namesake and cousin had crawled dying that
morning to his own doorstep) played "The White Cockade" on
his fife, and William Diamond beat his drum. Old Jedediah
Munroe, who had been wounded in the morning, marched along
with the rest, carrying his musket and the sword of his Scotch
forebears. They were going to meet the British. Although their
form, if not their appearance, was that of a military unit, they
marched and were to fight as individual men. Blood had been
spilled on Lexington Common, and a third of their relatives,
friends, and neighbors in the company were dead or wounded.
Over one per cent of their Ettle population were killed, shot down
by hysterical, undisciplined soldiers. One of every twenty-three
of the adult males was dead and of the heads of families one out
of every twelve. And the survivors now marched, not only out of

173

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

the Englishman's native and stubborn devotion to his rights, but
with a mental image, not six hours old, of the charging, shouting
light infantry, the acid puffs of gun smoke floating above, and the
sprawled bodies scattered below.

By noon, too, the news of Lexington Common had traveled
scores of miles in an ever widening circle of Middlesex, Suffolk,
and Norfolk counties. Hundreds of minutemen dropped their
tools in the workshops, their pens in parsonage studies, their
plows in the fields, their axes in the woods, and, lining up on
their village greens, went tramping off with their awkward music
in unfamiliar and imperfect cadence toward Lexington. Ten,
twenty, and thirty miles they marched, from Sudbury and Fram-
ingham to the south, Billerica and Reading to the north, Stow on
the west, Charlestown on the east, from Danvers, Dedham, Need-
ham, Medford eventually from over forty towns in all. Many of
them, after mustering and marching from their villages, broke
ranks and went as the crow flies, across fields, through woods,
over hill trails. 2 Half the time they ran, the Danvers company going
sixteen miles in four hours. Before the day's fighting was over,
some thirty-six hundred men, in companies of ten to forty, had
poured into the area in a fifteen-mile-long strip from Concord
to Lexington to Cambridge and had taken up positions on hills,
behind walls and trees, in roadside houses and barns, waiting for
the British.

Back in Concord, at noon, Colonel Smith's forces took some of
their wounded to local physicians for treatment. The expedition
had not been thought sufficiently hazardous to justify sending an
army surgeon along. Several of the wounded were taken to Dr.
Timothy Minot's in the center of the town, where Smith and
Pitcairn had already requisitioned chairs and set up an improvised
staff headquarters on the lawn. Later, while Dr. Minot and Dr.
John Cuming were treating the wounded. Smith, Pitcairn, and
other officers gathered at Wright's Tavern for brandy and food. A

174

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

servant from Dr. Minot brought to a wounded officer a watch
inadvertently left at the doctor's.

Some of the more seriously wounded were taken to private
houses and quartered in bedrooms. At the shop of Reuben Brown,
the harness maker who had scouted for the Concord militia at
Lexington at dawn that morning,, a chaise was taken, and from
John Beaton another was taken, to transport the wounded back
to Boston. One of the British who had died on the half-mile
retreat from the bridge, was buried summarily in the middle of the
town. Some of their wounded, like the man at the bridge axed by
the country boy, were left wandering or lying around and were
listed as missing. Meanwhile, the Concord militia had disappeared ;
the smoke from the burning gun carriages and stores had gone ; and
Captain Parsons 5 three companies for all practical purposes
abandoned on the other side of the river had returned unscathed.
Smith, according to William Emerson, showed "great fickleness
and inconstancy of mind" during the two hours after the fight at
the Bridge, when he just wasted time in Concord. 3 He probably
fretted about Gage's failure to send reinforcements or even to get
a messenger to him. Finally, at noon, he gave the orders to march.

Smith and Pitcairn could not have relished the prospect of
parading back through Lexington and hostile countryside to Bos-
ton. Smith had botched the whole assignment badly and beyond
hope of recovery. Pitcairn, the major of marines, could have
nothing left but contempt for the infantry, who had stampeded,
failed to obey orders, and behaved equally badly at Lexington
Common and at the North Bridge in Concord. Smith was so slow
and ponderous that even his junior officers were openly criticizing
him. As the companies formed for the returning march, three of
the light infantry companies found that half of their officers were
wounded. Nobody, of course, knew where the provincial militia
was, or what it had in mind to do next, or even where it would
appear again.

So the uninspired procession started to move out of Concord.

175

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

The ambulatory wounded walked in the middle of the columns,
and those unable to walk rode on horses. Lieutenant Gould of the
King's Own Regiment and Hull of the Forty-third Regiment, the
most seriously wounded of the officers, went out ahead of the march
in the commandeered chaises. There were no fifes and no drums.
Their only purpose now was to get back to Boston, and they wanted
to be as inconspicuous as possible. Taking the same route by which
they had entered Concord some four hours earlier, the grenadiers
marched in the road, the light infantry in flanking columns along
the high ridge on their left and the edge of a great meadow on
their right. They marched for ten or fifteen minutes, and there
was no incident at all to mar their limping progress. The light
infantry on the ridge encountered no militia. Then they came to
Meriam's Corner, where the road to Lexington bore to the right
and a road from Bedford came in from the left.

At this fork, facing the approaching British columns, the house
of Nathan and Abigail Meriam had stood for a hundred and
twelve years, surrounded by pleasant meadows. To the east was
a smaller house and across the Bedford road a barn. At the comer
there was a little brook, and the Lexington road narrowed to a
bridge that crossed it. Before the brook, the ridge, on which the
light infantry had moved to flank the more heavily equipped
grenadiers, sloped down to road level, and all the British forces
were merged again along the road.

Meriam's Corner, a mile from the center of Concord, was
reachable not only by the Lexington road but through the Great
Fields, which lay north of the ridge and extended a mile east of
Concord. The provincial militia some five hundred, consisting
of those who had forced the bridge at Concord and later arrivals
from other towns had moved across the fields as the British
were marching down the road. Also coming into Meriam's Corner,
from the north along the Bedford road, was the Reading company
of militia, headed by Dr. John Brooks. Behind them was the
Billerica company. From over the meadows to the south of the

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

Lexington road came the companies from East Sudbuiy and Fram-
ingham. Dr. Brooks led his men to cover behind the Meriam
houses and barns.

As the British tightened their columns to pass over the narrow
bridge, marching silently, slowly, and evenly, the militia opened
fire on them. Amos Barrett, the Concord mimiteman who had en-
joyed the music so much in the morning, wrote of his enemy,
"They were waylaid and a great many killed. When I got there,
a great many lay dead and the road was bloody." 4

To the retreating British, tired from their night march, fired on
from the rear and both flanks and unable to see most of their
attackers, it seemed as if there were thousands of militia sur-
rounding them. Ensign de Bemiere said, "There could not be less
than 500Q." 5 At first the British stood and returned the fire. But
as they tried to hurry past Meriam's Corner, the truth gradually
dawned upon them: they were not running just a few rods of hot
fire but had a fifteen-mile march ahead through incessant fire.
As they got toward Lexington into Lincoln, the little town that had
been carved out of Concord on its west and Lexington on its east
thirty years earlier, the minutemen of Captain Parker joined the
battle. The British were now beginning to panic, as they ran a
continuing shower of musket balls, leaving dead and wounded
where they fell.

The minutemen were swarming along the woods on both sides
of the Lexington road though not nearly to the number of
de Berniere's five thousand. Yet it could easily have seemed, from
the shrewdly improvised tactics of the militia, as even more than
that. The minutemen fired from behind trees, stone walls, or barn
doors, ducked away through the woods or fields, and then re-
appeared some yards down the road. As one company used up its
ammunition and went home exhausted from running over the
rough, brambly terrain, other companies from more distant places
were just arriving.

To the British, who had no alternative to staying on the road

177

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

because It at best permitted speed and because if they ever got
split up in the wilderness of woods off the road they would all be
lost, the whole thing was an unspeakable nightmare. They were
used to fighting in the open, where they and the enemy could
plainly see one another. They were used to fixed-position fighting
and to volley formations. Now they were facing or rather enduring
a shower of fire from unseen marksmen in shifting positions. Lieu-
tenant Sutherland, wounded in the shoulder at the bridge in
Concord and unable to use a musket, was fiercely bitter about this
innovation in infantry warfare. He accused the minutemen flatly
of "making the cowardly disposition ... to murder us all/' and
he spoke also of "rascals" and "concealed villains." 6 In Suther-
land's formalized warfare shooting an enemy from concealed
positions was murder not just killing. Although Lieutenant
Barker of the King's Own was much too liberal with complaints
about his own officers to have any left for the fighting techniques
of the militia, the British feeling in general was that fighting from
concealed positions was dirty and dishonorable. They saw no
contradiciton in this attitude and their own conduct on Lexington
Common earlier that morning, when, outnumbering the militia
at least fourteen to one, they cut the provincials down in five
minutes. In that case, the rules were respected. They were in the
open, and each side could see the other plainly.

The assault of the militia on the British columns became more
intense and aggressive as the action moved eastward through
Lincoln into Lexington, where the men of Captain Parker's com-
pany, now fighting in their own way, sought vengeance for the
morning. "We saw a wood at a distance," said the Reverend
Edmund Foster, one of the Bedford minutemen, "which appeared
to lie on or near the road the enemy must pass. Many [of the
minutemen] leaped over the wall and made for that wood. We
arrived just in time to meet the enemy. There was then, on the
opposite side of the road, a young growth of wood well filled with
Americans. The enemy was now completely between two fires,

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

renewed and briskly kept up. They ordered out a flank guard on
the left to dislodge the Americans from their posts behind large
trees; but they only became a better mark to be shot at. ...
Eight or more of their number were killed on the spot." 7

Having been shot in the leg, the heavy Lieutenant Colonel
Smith was put on a horse but found himself such a conspicuous
target that he slid off and limped along with the troops. Pitcairn,
taking command, charged up to the front of the columns and
tried to get the panicky troops in some kind of order. His horse,
frightened, threw him to the ground. The horse ran off, the major's
pistols still in its saddle holsters, across the fields to the enemy, who
with customary frugality put the pistols to use as General Putnam's
side arms throughout the war and sold the horse at auction.
Officers, sergeants, and rank-and-file fell under the fire, some being
helped along by their comrades, some just left where they fell. The
others fired aimlessly, as if in protest. One British officer com-
plained "most of it was thrown away for want of that coolness
and steadiness which distinguishes troops who have been inured
to service. The contempt in which they held the rebels, and per-
haps their opinion that they would be sufficiently intimidated by
a brisk fire, occasioned this improper conduct; which the officers
did not prevent as they should have done." 8

The minutemen were fighting, of course, with no discipline
or organization whatsoever. One of the provincial participants
wrote, "Each sought his own place and opportunity to attack and
annoy the enemy from behind trees^ rocks, fences, and buildings
as seemed most convenient." 9 Some of the more experienced light
infantrymen started attempts to flush out the minutemen lining
the road. Since the effective range of a musket was no more than
sixty to seventy yards, only a narrow strip along the road would
have to have been cleared to keep the British safe. But the terrain
was so varied and so full of perfect natural barriers behind which
to hide, that the weary infantrymen had only isolated instances
of success. When they came up behind Captain Wilson of the

*79

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Bedford company waiting in ambush behind a barn, they shot him
in the back. And old Jedediah Mimroe of Captain Parker's com-
pany, who probably did not bother to conceal himself , was killed,
and so was another of Parker's men, John Raymond, who had
missed the morning muster.

On the eastern slope of Fiske Hill on the western side of
Lexington, James Hayward, of the Acton company, approached
a house, from which a British soldier, looking for hidden marks-
men, emerged to get a drink at the well. Looking up, the soldier
saw the minuteman, lifted Hs gun, and said, "You're a dead man.'*
Hayward replied, "So are you," and the two fired simultaneously.
The soldier died on the spot and Hayward the next day. 10

The sporadic British flanking operation, however, did not last
long. The light infantry was running out of ammunition and was
near exhaustion after having been in the field steadily for nearly
fourteen hours. The unfamiliar warfare was beginning to break
their spirit, and they stopped returning the militia fire. A horse
in the British columns "that had a wounded man on his back and
three hanging by his sides" was shot and fell with its burden in the
roadway. 11 The minutemen, still increasing in numbers as new
companies arrived, stepped up their fire. At last British morale
collapsed completely, and the columns broke up into a running
mob. "When we arrived within a mile of Lexington," de Berniere
said, "our ammunition began to fail, and the light companies were
so fatigued with flanking they were scarce able to act, and a great
number of wounded scarce able to get forward made a great
confusion ... we began to run rather than retreat in order . . .
we [the officers] attempted to stop the men and form them two
deep, but to no purpose. The confusion increased rather than
lessened . . . The officers got to the front and presented their
bayonets, and told the men if they advanced, they should die. Upon
this they began to form under a very heavy fire." 12 Thus, as they
passed Lexington Common in the early afternoon, the expedi-
tionary force of the British, bleeding, frightened, tired, reached the

1 80

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

lowest ebb of an unfortunate day. "We must have laid down our
arms or been picked off by the rebels at their pleasure/' Lieutenant
Barker concluded gloomily. 13

The battered force turned the corner at Lexington Common and
stumbled down the straight stretch of the road that had brought
them within sight of Captain Parker's company early that same
morning. It is doubtful that they could have gone another mile,
and they faced the tragical irony of coming to their end in the
shadow of the Reverend Jonas Clarke's meetinghouse on Lex-
ington Common. Instead of which, a four-pound cannon ball
crashed through the wall of the meetinghouse from a fieldpiece a
thousand yards away. It was the first artillery fire of the day, and
it came from a cannon perched on a height on the Boston side of
Lexington Common by the Right Honorable Hugh, Earl Percy.
"I had the happiness of saving them from inevitable destruction,,"
His Grace wrote, of the rescue of Smith's stampeding force, to his
father, the Duke of Northumberland. 14

ii

It was almost twelve hours earlier, shortly after leaving Cam-
bridge on his ill-fated march, that Smith, aware that the news of
his expedition was all over Middlesex County and that his secret
raid was no secret, had sent his courier to Gage for reinforcements.
As it happened, Gage himself had already been jolted by Lord
Percy's report of the conversations on Boston Common revealing
that both the fact and destination of Smith's march were generally
known. Accordingly, he had given orders for Percy's First Brigade
to be under arms at four in the morning, and he was undoubtedly
joined by Percy in the decision to send fieldpieces with it. The
First Brigade, consisting of three regiments of infantry, a battalion
of marines, and a detachment of Royal Artillery, was almost twice
the strength in manpower of Smith's force. Gage, obviously sen-
sitive to the pressures of local Tories and the complaining ministry

181

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

in London, did not want the expedition to fail. Altogether, half of
his entire army was now involved in it.

If Lord Percy's brigade had left at four in the morning, and
even allowing for the long march out over Boston Neck, it would
have been in Concord not later than ten o'clock, about the time
of the battle at the North Bridge, instead of arriving in Lexington
at two-thirty in the afternoon. But the brigade did not leave at
four. It left at nine, five hours later, due to staff work at Gage's
headquarters that matched in incompetence and incredible ir-
responsibility anything that had distinguished Lieutenant Colonel
Smith's efforts in the field.

When he was awakened by Smith's courier at five, Gage must
have been gratified by his own foresight in having ordered the
First Brigade to be under arms at four. By then the men must have
been awakened, dressed, and on the parade ground. The officers
would have been rounded up from their lodgings scattered all
over town. (The next day Gage was to order "the officers to lay
in their men's barracks 'till further orders" and the troops "to lay
dressed in their barracks this night." 15 ) But at four o'clock, and
at five, too, all the regiments of the First Brigade were sound
asleep, the troops in their barracks, and the officers dispersed all
over Boston. The parade ground was empty.

Gage's orders of the night before had been delivered to the
brigade's major. Since the major was not at home, they were
simply lft at his lodgings by Gage's aide, who made no inquiry
about the major's whereabouts and no report on his errand. When
the major did get home, his servant neglected to tell him that there
was a message for him. So the major, who had probably had a
fairly intense social evening by that hour, went to sleep. Shortly
after five o'clock, when Gage was awakened by Smith's urgent
message, an inquiry revealed that there was no brigade ready or
even alerted to march. Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, the
adjutant of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who was so disturbed at
the delay at the embarkation the night before, was considerably

182

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

more upset over the delays of the morning. His regiment, which
was supposed to have been under arms at four o'clock, received its
orders, dated at six o'clock, at seven o'clock, directing it to be on
the parade ground, with a day's provisions, at seven-thirty. With
Mackenzie's no-nonsense attitude toward his duties as adjutant,
no time was wasted in his regiment once the orders were received :
"We accordingly assembled the regiment with the utmost ex-
pedition, and with the 4th and 47th were on the parade at the
hour appointed, with one day's provisions. By some mistake the
Marines did not receive the order until the other regiments of the
brigade were assembled, by which means it was half past 8 o'clock
before the brigade was ready to march." 16

The mistake with regard to the Marine battalion was even less
excusable than the one with regard to the entire brigade the night
before. When the whole brigade, except the Marines, were on the
parade ground, an inquiry was sent to their barracks, where it
was asserted, in what appears to have been strong language, that
they never heard of the orders. Gage's staff and the brigade's
insisted that they had. "In the altercation it came out that the order
had been addressed to Major Pitcairn, who commanded the
marines, and left at his headquarters, though the gentlemen con-
cerned ought to have recollected that Pitcairn had been dispatched
the evening before with the grenadiers and light infantry under
Lieut. Col. Smith. This double mistake lost us from four till nine
o'clock, the time we marched off to support Col. Smith." 17

Later it must have been a bitter reflection to the cumbersome
colonel that the one thing that he himself did not bungle on his
expedition sending for help early enough was bungled for him
by someone else, and that the orders responding to his call for
reinforcements were addressed in Boston to his own second in com-
mand, whom he had sent six hours earlier ahead of his main force
on the way to Concord.

At nine o'clock the First Brigade marched out of Boston and
set out the long way William Dawes had taken, over the Neck, to

183

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Concord. From Cambridge they followed the same route that
Smith had to Lexington. (The boats were still anchored on the
Cambridge side of the Charles, waiting for Smith's forces when
they returned, ) It was broad daylight, of course, and they marched
all through the morning, through the noon hour, and into the
early afternoon. But in odd contrast to the strangely floating
population of dashing riders of the midnight and early morning
hours that Smith's force had encountered, Percy's brigade found
the whole countryside deserted. "In all the places we marched
through, and in the houses on the road, few or no people were to
be seen; and the houses were in general shut up." 18

Although it later had nothing but grievous troubles, the first
Brigade had, at least, a good night's sleep due to its almost farcically
delayed orders and set out jauntily enough, the fifers and drum-
mers of the thirty-two companies derisively playing "Yankee
Doodle," as in the bright, clear sunlight of early spring they
marched through country roads and village streets to the relief of
their brothers. Not until they came to the Great Bridge over the
Charles, just south of Harvard College, did they encounter trouble,
which, due to another episode of military inadequacy this time
on the provincial side did not impede them much. Nevertheless,
it put Lord Percy on the alert that there was organized resistance
to his march. Percy, the best mind by far among the British in
Boston, knew very well that organized resistance meant that war
had commenced. And he commanded his brigade as if war now
prevailed. He had to stop his uneventful march at the Great Bridge
over the Charles, because the provincials had stripped the bridge
of its planks and only the stringers stretched across the river. This
was a superb move on the part of the provincials. It could have so
delayed Percy's brigade that Smith's force would have been
annihilated. However, having removed the planks, the provincials
carefully piled them up on the Cambridge end of the bridge. Percy
sent some men over on the stringers, and they replaced enough
planks for the brigade with their cannon to move across without

184

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

too much delay. The supply wagons with their personnel he left
behind to finish the job.

Percy then proceeded to Harvard Square, where, the college
being in spring recess and those students and tutors who had
stayed in Cambridge having gone to Concord with arms from the
college armory, there was nothing but an ominous quiet.

The brigade's advanced guards had narrowly averted another
fiasco when they had the imprudence to ask some students in
Harvard Square the way to Lexington and were misdirected. A
tutor, Isaac Smith of the class of 1767, said "he could not tell a
lie" and sent them on the right road subsequent to which display
of virtue he found it desirable to leave Cambridge to live in
England until I786. 19 The brigade met no one else in Cambridge.

And so it was all the way to Menotomy, Lord Percy com-
plaining, "As all the houses were shut up and there was not the
appearance of a single inhabitant, I could get no intelligence
concerning them till I had passed Menotomy." 20 There, in the
next town east of Lexington, his day's business with the provincials
first began in one way or another.

In Menotomy, Percy got the first direct news of what had
happened to Smith's forces. The place still suspiciously empty of
provincials, he encountered a chaise coming toward him. It con-
tained Lieutenant Edward Gould of the Bang's Own, who had
been badly wounded in the foot at the North Bridge in Concord.
Gould told Percy that Smith's force had been and was still under
heavy attack and was running out of ammunition, that what was
left of it was on the way back to Boston, probably not far behind
him and the wounded Lieutenant Hull, who was with him. Percy
quickened his march, now about to cross the town line into Lex-
ington.

As soon as Percy's brigade left Menotomy, provincials started
to appear not the minutemen who were already harassing the
retreat of Smith on the other side of Lexington, but the "exempts,"
the old men and others ineligible for the minute companies. First

185

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

they captured Lieutenant Gould and Hull and sent them off to
Medford for safekeeping. Then they intercepted Lord Percy's
supply wagons. At first the grenadiers guarding them refused to
take the orders of a dozen old men seriously. But the old men
meant business and let loose a barrage that killed the driver and
four "fine British horses," from which the good, thrifty people of
Menotomy later removed the shoes. 21 At this display the six husky,
armed grenadiers, true to the general values of the day, promptly
surrendered to the dozen old men, and Percy never did get his
supplies, for the old men took the second wagon, too. And in
Menotomy, too, Percy heard for the first time the sharp report of
the guns at Lexington probably all provincial by then and he
marched his brigade down toward the Common.

But they stopped short of it, within sight of the meetinghouse,
at the beginning of the long straight stretch, where Pitcairn had
stopped just ten hours earlier to prime and load to meet John
Parker's company. Percy sized up the situation immediately,
with regard both to the plight of Smith and to the likely moves
of the provincials; and this gentleman soldier, moving with poise,
alertness, and assurance, took over command of all His Majesty's
forces on the scene and exhibited a skill in military leadership
which the day had not yet seen.

ni

Earl Percy and his First Brigade made their first contact with
Smith's exhausted forces at two-thirty, when both detachments,
Percy's from the southeast and Smith's from the northwest, came
within sight of opposite ends of the Common at Lexington. Percy
wisely chose to stop his forces a half mile south of the Common,
near Sergeant William Munroe's tavern, which he made his head-
quarters. The site was excellent for a defensive delaying action
and for regrouping. This point on the road offered an unob-
structed view, and it was flanked by two hills, of which Percy took

1 86

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

immediate possession, placing one of Ms fieldpieces on each. The
hill on the right, about a quarter of a mile in advance of that on
the left, put the cannon within easy range of the Common. The
one on the left, rising abruptly behind Munroe's Tavern, com-
manded any approach from the Concord road over the fields to
the west.

Lieutenant Mackenzie of the Royal Welch Fusiliers left an exact
account of the tactical situation on the Brigade's arrival: "As we
pursued our march, about two o'clock we heard some straggling
shots fired about a mile in our front: as we advanced we heard
the firing plainer and more frequent, and at half after two, being
near the church at Lexington, and the fire increasing, we were
ordered to form the line, which was immediately done by extend-
ing on each side of the road, but by reason of the stone walls and
other obstructions, it was not formed in so regular a manner as it
should have been. The grenadiers and light infantry were at this
time retiring toward Lexington, fired upon by the rebels, who took
every advantage the face of the country afforded them. As soon
as the grenadiers and light infantry perceived the first brigade
drawn up for their support, they shouted repeatedly, and the
firing ceased for a short time.

"The ground we first formed upon was something elevated,
and commanded a view of that before us for about a mile, where
it was terminated by some pretty high grounds covered with
wood. The village of Lexington lay between both parties. We
could observe a considerable number of the rebels, but they were
much scattered, and not above fifty of them to be seen in a body
in any place. Many lay concealed behind the stone walls and
fences. They appeared most numerous in the road near the church,
and in a wood in the front and on the left flank of the line where
our regiment was posted. A few cannon shot were fired at those
on and near the road, which dispersed them. The flank companies
now retired and formed behind the brigade, which was soon fired
upon by the rebels most advanced. A brisk fire was returned, but

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

without much effect. As there was a piece of open morassy ground
in front of the left of our regiment, it would have been difficult to
have passed it under the fire of the rebels from behind the trees
and walls on the other side. Indeed, no part of the brigade was
ordered to advance; we therefore drew up near the morass, in
expectation of orders how to act, sending an officer for one of the
six pounders. During this time the rebels endeavored to gain our
flanks, and crept into the covered ground on either side, and as
close as they could in front, firing now and then in perfect security.
We also advanced a few of our best marksmen who fired at those
who shewed themselves," 22

None of these scattered fringe shootings came to much, for
Percy had already concluded that his job was only to get Smith's
crippled force back to Boston and his own brigade with them. He
had no intention of going beyond his orders and chasing the
minutemen out of Lexington. Using his fieldpieces, he simply
kept them as far away as possible, while the light infantry and
grenadiers that had been to Concord sprawled exhausted on the
fields around Munroe's Tavern, recovering their wind and
strength, in the midst of what Percy staked out as a protected
zone a great square with his soldiers forming lines to make the
boundaries, across the Lexington-Boston road and up the hills on
either side, down lines parallel to the road and then another line
connecting them, again crossing the road.

Within the square there was, in addition to William Munroe's
tavern, a settlement of seven or eight houses, most of them close to
a century old. Among them was the house of the Widow Mulliken,
where Dr. Prescott had spent the evening before, courting Lydia.
Nathaniel Mulliken had been Lexington's first clockmaker, and
his small shop still stood near the house. Mrs. Mulliken's seven
children ranged from her oldest son, Nathaniel, twenty-three, who
had been on the common in the morning and fought again in the
afternoon, down to a ten-year-old. Like most of the households
along the main roads through Lexington from Concord to Boston,

188

Hugh, Earl Percy (1742-1817), commanded the force that
rescued the British expedition to Lexington and Concord.
Later the second Duke of Northumberland, Percy was the only
commanding officer of the day to distinguish himself. LEXING-
TON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Dr. Joseph Warren (1741-75),, a Boston physician, was prob-
ably the most versatile of the Massachusetts patriots and easily
the most charming in manners. He died two months after Lex-
ington in the battle of Bunker's Hill MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS,
BOSTON.

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

the Mulliken house was evacuated of women and children. And all
morning while the British were occupied at Concord, the women
had buried their silverware and other valuables all around the
countryside and then repaired to the remoter farmhouses until the
British had left for good. Near the Mulliken house were two others:
the house and shop of Joshua Bond, the saddle and harness maker,
and the considerably more pretentious establishment of Deacon
Joseph Loring and his family of eight.

All three of these houses were burned to the ground by the
British, without doubt at the order of Percy, who had Smith's
account of the provincials' invincible firing from the protection of
roadside houses and who did not want his own rear guard
molested as he moved out. Munroe's Tavern he used as a hospital
for treating the wounded, and there he outlined to his officers the
plan of retreat. He allowed the men of Smith's detachment a half
hour's rest, ordered an occasional firing of the cannon to keep the
provincials at bay (the cannon killed no one but seemed to have a
considerable psychological effect as the militia saw the ball hit the
meetinghouse, go in the front wall, and emerge from the back wall
over the pulpit), and started reforming his men, now numbering
about eighteen hundred, a third of whom were too battle-worn
even to take care of themselves. These he put at the head of his
column, the most protected place in the line as he learned from
Smith's account of the flanking and rear-guard warfare of the
provincials. Behind the Smith detachment he placed the Fourth
and Forty-seventh Infantry Regiments, then the Marines Battalion
and, finally, the Royal Welch Fusiliers Regiment as rear guard.
He directed each of them to serve as rear guard in succession after
every seven mfles. He put flanking parties far out to the sides to
uncover snipers behind stone walls, trees, and buildings. At three
forty-five, an hour or so after he arrived, he was ready to march.

Percy in no way underestimated the rough path that lay ahead
of him and knew also that General Gage would not, in order to
send him help, dare to weaken the one and a half brigades left

189

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

to hold Boston. His confidence, assurance, and command of the
situation, nevertheless, had an immensely restorative effect upon
both the officers, who had committed one mistake after another
all day, and the men, who had as often as not paid no attention
to them. Colonel Smith, with his massive weight now imposing
upon an injured leg, was swallowed up in the anonymity of a pro-
tected position within the columns where he could do no harm,

iv

While all this reorganization and restoration of the British
was going on within sight of the Common, the minutemen from
a score of towns kept a respectable distance, and most of them also
rested. They also had some military reorganization visited upon
them in the person of Major General William Heath, the first
general officer to take command of an American army in the
field. Appointed a general by the Second Provincial Congress
in February, General Heath was a thirty-eight-year-old Roxbury
farmer who developed a passionate interest in military theory as
he grew up and spent all his spare time reading military treatises.
In his Memoirs,, published after the war in the initial phase of a
journalistic tradition now common among American generals,
Heath described himself candidly as "of middling stature, light
complexion, very corpulent and bald-headed." He had been a
captain of Boston's Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company
and Colonel of the First Regiment of the Suffolk Militia under
Governor Sir Francis Bernard. After the provincials organized
their own militia, he was chosen captain of the first Roxbury
company. With four others he was appointed General Officer
of the militia that was under the direction of the Committee of
Safety, the directorate which functioned as commander in chief.
On April i gth, Heath was the only one of the five general officers
on the scene all day. He had spent the day before at the session of
the Committee in Menotomy and had met some of the British

190

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

advance officers, who had been sent out ahead of the Smith ex-
pedition, on the Lexington-Boston road. Apparently Heath paid
no particular attention to them. Although he saw that they were
armed and therefore not out on pleasure rides, he made no
inquiries in spite of the fact that the whole countryside was astir
with riders in all directions. General Heath went home and to bed.
In his Memoirs, in which he refers to himself as "our General/ 3
he detailed his movements on the morning of the nineteenth :

"On the igth, at daybreak, our General was awoke, called from
his bed, and informed that a detachment of the British army were
out. . . . Our General, in the morning, proceeded to the Com-
mittee of Safety." 23 This was a proper and necessary thing for our
general to do, because he was commissioned by the Committee
and was authorized to act only under its direct orders. The Com-
mittee, routed from its beds and forced to hide in the cornfield
the night before, was still sitting in Menotomy. "From the Com-
mittee," General Heath continued in his Memoirs., "he took a crossr
road to Watertown, the British being in possession of the Lexington
road. At Watertown, finding some militia who had not marched,
but applied for orders, he sent them down to Cambridge, with
directions to take up the planks, barricade the south end of the
bridge, and there to take post; that, in case the British should,
on their return, take that road to Boston, their retreat must be
impeded." This, of course, must have been after Perc/s brigade
had crossed the bridge in the morning, for there was neither a
barricade nor a guard there when his men put back the planks
removed earlier at the order of the Cambridge selectmen. Heath
"then pushed to join the militia, taking a cross road towards
Lexington, in which he was joined by Dr. Joseph Warren (after-
wards a Major-General) who kept with him. Our General joined
the militia just after Lord Percy had joined the British; and
having assisted hi forming a regiment, which had been broken by
the shot from the British field-pieces (for the discharge of these,
together with the flames and snioke of several buildings, to which

191

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

the British nearly at the same time had set fire, opened a new
and more terrific scene) ," 24

If General Heath intended to equate himself and his arrival on
the provincial side with Lord Percy's on the British, he was
certainly less successful "in forming a regiment." The mimitemen
and other militia were just not susceptible of regimentation. It
is significant that General Heath, even though the ranking officer
present and the only general officer, claimed to have done no
more than to assist. Actually, the provincials' forces did with
Heath present exactly what they unquestionably would have done
without him. They waited until the British were on the move again
and they could have another round of the running war to which
they were temperamentally attuned and at which alone they had
any chance of success. And if Heath or anyone else had formed
them in regiments, they would quickly have dispersed into patrols
and sniper groups anyhow.

Though the provincials were in no need of such a lifting of
collapsed morale as the Smith expedition was, it had nevertheless
been a day of tenseness, of tragedy to many families, of confusions,
and, above all, of terrible commitment. Technically, they were all
still British subjects and they were all of them guilty of high crimes
in attacking the forces of their King. And there could be no
turning back after the excitement of the chase died down. These
farmers and craf tsmen, clergymen and physicians, from little towns
all over the area, had committed themselves to however long it
would tate to force by arms correction of the abuses to which
they felt they had been subjected or to lose even those rights of
life and liberty that had not been violated. And even though not
all of them might have thus perceived and defined their situation,
they nevertheless knew what it was all about and that their actions
that springtime Wednesday were not just the deeds of one day to
be forgotten on the next. There were several long pauses in the
day's fighting during which they thought and consulted with
one another, listened as was their custom during crises to their

192

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

ministers the learned men and the political philosophers of their
times and communities and had all the sober second thoughts
that could have sent them home to their f aims and shops.

It should also be remembered that the Provincial Congress,
the guiding force behind all this day's fighting, although its creation
was a masterful expression of the political genius of Samuel
Adams and its proceedings a reflection of his skilled timing,
derived whatever inherent strength and purpose it had from scores
of town meetings, who debated the issues, elected their delegates,
and sat down from time to time in long sessions to write them in-
structions. So it is not at all unlikely that during the break in the
battle at Lexington in the midafternoon, the minds of these men
were already turning to the implications of the day, not so much
in their effects upon history, as in their bearing upon day-to-day
life the next week, the next month, and the next year. There were
no shouts of victory in Lexington as the thoroughly shattered corps
of Colonel Smith was pursued through town to the shelter of
Percy's brigade. And if there was no morale problem among the
provincials, there may well have been a deeper need.

If so, it must have been met in great measure by the arrival of
Dr. Joseph Warren. Adams and Hancock had disappeared before
the firing on Lexington Common and were now safe in a parsonage
out of town. But Dr. Warren, certainly sufficiently known to them
as the boldest of all the patriot leaders, had come there to join them.
Young at thirty-four, thoroughly convinced of British persecution
of the colony, a gifted orator, Dr. Warren had virtually given up
a large practice to devote himself to public affairs. With none of
Samuel Adams' wile, or John Adams' hardheaded objectivity or
John Hancock's theatrical opportunism, he was the thoroughly
trusted work horse of the very early days of the Revolution and
courageous to a fault. As late as the sixth of March, the fifth
anniversary of the Boston Massacre, little more than six weeks
before Lexington, he had stood in the pulpit of the Old South
Meetinghouse in Boston and, while forty uniformed British officers

193

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

squirmed in the front pews, launched upon an eloquent speech,
in which he assailed the evils of lodging a standing army amidst
a free people and resurrected the massacre in powerfully emotional
if somewhat apocryphal terms. On the morning of the nineteenth
of April, some eight hours after Warren had dispatched Revere
to Lexington, a messenger came to him with the news of the firing
on Lexington Common. He summoned a young colleague, Dr.
William Eustis, and, turning his Boston office over to him, left
for the Charlestown ferry and Lexington. On the way Warren
tried to pass Lord Percy's column on the Cambridge road to
Lexington but was stopped, and so he rode along behind them as
far as the Black Horse Tavern in Menotomy, where he joined
the Committee of Public Safety and General Heath, with whom
he rode to Lexington.

While Heath "assisted in forming a regiment," Warren un-
doubtedly gave guiding counsel on the decision to pursue the
British all the way back to Boston. A party to the proceedings of
the Provincial Congress that called for the colonists to attack only
to defend themselves, Warren was astute enough to realize that
the episode in the early morning on Lexington Common was all
that was needed to show Massachusetts innocent of any first
spilling of blood and to unite the other colonies in action against
the oppressors. To the conglomeration of militia that now poured
into the northwest part of Lexington, while Percy was reordering
his troops in the southeast sector, Dr. Warren was the Committee
of Safety and therefore the only commander in chief they knew.
Heath was his general officer and, as such, would naturally have
carried out Warren's orders. In any case, at some time during
that midafternoon hour of rest and reorganization that the British
took under the shelter of Percy's cannon, the decision was made to
pursue them to Boston, and Dr. Warren was the only official in
town to make it.

But neither Warren nor Heath evidently gave much further
attention to the military aspects of the pursuit. With Percy's men

194

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

immobilized, there was plenty of time to have sent advanced units
to throw obstacles in the path of his retreat or to organize and
carry out a major Banking movement. But nothing of this nature
was decided or done not even a solution ventured to the most
pressing problem of the militia, the shortage of powder and bullets.
If there was any ammunition left in the Lexington meetinghouse,
it was inaccessible, because, as Percy had established with one shot,
the meetinghouse was well within range of the cannon he had
perched on the hills down the road where his troops rested. It is
not at all unlikely that the provincials, therefore, were spending
their time on the discussion of less military and more general
propositions than the distribution of powder. When the fighting
did resume, there was no evidence of Heath's "regiment 33 or of
planned strategy. Nor did Heath indicate in his Memoirs that he
had any. The militia just broke up into small parties or individuals
again, chased the British until their ammunition gave out or they
got too tired or too far away from home, and then let the fighting
be taken over by others nearer Boston, who were just arriving
along the British retreat route.

After listening to Smith and Pitcairn, Percy made an assump-
tion, and it was correct. There would be no pitched battle, with
the provincials lining up in a roadway or square in a frontal
attempt to halt the British. They would fight as they had on the
retreat from Concord, from concealed positions along the flanks
and from the rear. He issued orders accordingly. If snipers were
caught in houses, kill them. If necessary, bum down the house.
In case of heavy attack, disperse the provincials by using the
cannon. And always keep moving toward Boston.

At quarter of four Percy gave the order, and his procession
of eighteen hundred soldiers started the long and perilous road
back. As soon as they moved, somewhere behind them at least

195

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

an equal number of country militia scattered across the fields,
through the woods, behind houses, to meet them. "Before the
column had advanced a mile on the road," Lieutenant Mackenzie
said in his diary, "we were fired at from all quarters, but particu-
larly from the houses on the roadside and the adjacent stone walls,
and the soldiers were so enraged at suffering from an unseen enemy
that they forced open many of the houses from which the fire
proceeded and put to death all those found in them. Those houses
would certainly have been burnt had any fire been found in them,
or had there been time to kindle any; but only three or four near
where we first formed suffered in this way. As the troops drew
nearer to Cambridge, the number and fire of the rebels increased,
and although they did not show themselves openly in a body in
any part, except on the road in our rear, our men threw away
their fire very inconsiderately and without being certain of its
effect: this emboldened them [the provincials] and induced them
to draw nearer, but whenever a cannon shot was fired at any con-
siderable number, they instantly dispersed." 25

The most efficient fighting of the British was done by the
flanking parties, who proceeded along the inside boundaries of the
stone walls and raided, as they went, the houses from which shots
came or were suspected to be coming. Whenever they tired, or the
roughness of the terrain forced them to pull in toward their own
marching columns, the militia came in closer, with deadlier fire,
As the column moved across the flat plain of Menotomy, however,
the troops in the main line of march could fire, and the exchange
of shots got brisker. As the militia from the larger peripheral
towns around Boston now took up the battle, Percy had to set
up his fiddpieces again, and gained a little respite as the militia
scattered before the cannon fire. Without stopping, he was able
to get his flankers reorganized and, fanning out again, the flanking
troops got some of the provincials between the British main column
and the flankers. Here at Menotomy the British flanking tactics

196

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

were at their most effective and the provincial militia probably
at their most careless.

A party of seven minutemen from the Danvers company got
in advance of the British march and, barricading themselves
behind walls, trees, and piles of shingles, waited to open fire on
the column as it marched by on their right. But British flankers,
coining up behind them on their left, made a wide sweep and
killed all seven from the rear. A musket ball from other flankers
knocked a pin out of Dr. Warren's hair. Another medical man,
Dr. Eliphalet Downer, got into a bayonet duel with a British
soldier, after both had missed their shots, and finally killed him
by knocking him out with the butt and then stabbing him with
the bayonet. Three Cambridge men were Hied in one spot by
flankers who came upon them, and another group of four or five
were killed in a hot exchange with flankers. But the shots of the
unseen militia still peppered the now-tiring column of Lord Percy.
His flankers, with increased desperation, probed the houses along
the way to flush out the snipers.

At the fork in the Lexington Road, where the left branch turns
to Medford on the east and the right continues southeasterly to
Cambridge, was the tavern of Benjamin Cooper. Nearby, along
the Menotomy River, was the prosperous farm of Samuel Whitte-
more, seventy-eight, father of nine children, including one
daughter who gave him thirty-six grandchildren before she died
at forty-eight. In his youth Whittemore had been a captain of
dragoons in the service of George Ill's grandfather. Now, in his
seventy-ninth year as he heard the Percy troops marching along
the road, he grabbed his old musket, a brace of pistols, and the
sword of his captain days and went forth alone to do battle with
a brigade. He took shelter in an advantageous position by Cooper's
Tavern. Within the tavern sat two known topers of Menotomy,
Jason Winship and Jabez Wyman, who, at forty-three and thirty-
nine, were over three decades Whittemore's juniors. With them in
the bar were the innkeeper Cooper and his wife Rachel, both of

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

whom fled to the cellar as the British approached. But the
convivial brothers-in-law, Winship and Wyman, refused to budge :
"They were drinking flip. Wyman was warned of the danger but
says he, 'Let us finish the mug, they won't come yet.' " 26 Outside
the tavern, from behind his stone wall barricade, the well-armed
Whittemore, meanwhile, aimed his musket and killed a British
soldier; he then took one of his pistols and killed another. By then,
of course, the British had discovered his position, and several
soldiers converged upon him. A part of his cheekbone was shattered
by a musket ball, and a couple of flankers charged and beat him
with the mercilessness that they bore to all hidden snipers. Satisfied
that they had "killed the old rebel" 27 (Samuel Whittemore sur-
vived and died eighteen years later at ninety-six), they turned
their attention to the tavern, a famous Whig resort and a likely
place for more snipers. Inside they found Winship and Wyman at
their drinks and left them dead, for under the heavy fire that was
raining on the British they took no time to interrogate able-bodied
men along the line of their retreat. If they looked as if they could
have fired, they were killed.

Such a fate also overcame a Cambridge man. of limited mental
development, William Marcy, who had been "warned out of
town" by the selectman in 1770 as "a man of very poor circum-
stances" but who stayed as a hired man of Dr. William Knee-
land. 28 Marcy was accustomed to watching the British on their
occasional exercise parades out of Boston. He thought that the
retreat was merely another practice march. To improve his view
he perched on a fence and noted to his delight that the exercise
had the added attraction of sham firing. A bullet killed him.

Nearby, John Hicks, an avid patriot and attendant at the
Boston Tea Party, was shot through the heart as he blasted at the
British, and so was Moses Richardson, who was also an active
combatant. Not far away Jason Russell had barricaded himself
behind his gate with bundles of shingles, "from which to fire on
the enemy." 29 When a patrol of Essex militia sought refuge in

198

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

Ms house from some flankers who had found them, Russell left
Ms barricaded gate and joined them, ready to fire from the house.
But the flankers caught up, and Russell fell in his doorway. Later
in the afternoon. Hicks, Marcy, and Richardson, and Russell,
Wynian, and WinsMp were buried in common graves and, in due
time, memorialized on a granite shaft for falling "in defence of
the Liberty of the People" the poor idiot, Marcy, and the
drunken lingerers, WinsMp and Wyman, were immortalized along
with their less serene contemporaries.

Behind all these episodes in Menotomy and Cambridge was an
increasingly desperate British brigade in full, and now once again
thoroughly wearying, retreat and a provincial militia that seemed
to be more numerous and less visible as the day wore on. In a
determined attempt to stop the concealed firing, the British
flankers inspected every house along the road. When they came
to the house of Deacon Joseph Adams, who "knew that Ms life
would be in danger, both on account of his name and also for his
reputation for patriotic zeal," 30 wMch however did not include
shouldering a musket, they found only the deacon's wife with her
eighteen-day-old infant and three other children. The deacon
himself had ran across the fields to Mde in the hayloft of the
Reverend Samuel Cooke's barn. His nine-year-old son, Joel, took
over the management of the household and saw Ms mother and the
baby leave safely. He struck up a conversation with the soldiers,
warned them against stealing the church silver, and used his
father's ale to extinguish a small fire that they set on leaving. 31

Meanwhile the British limped frantically on toward Boston.
Lieutenant Mackenzie noted that the all-important flanking
parties were getting less and less efficient, eventually causing more
harm than good as they became mere plunderers.

"During the whole of the march from Lexington the rebels kept
an incessant irregular fire from all points at the column, which
was the more galling as our flanking parties, wMch at first were
placed at sufficient distances to cover the march of it, were at last,

199

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

from the different obstructions they occasionally met with, obliged
to keep almost close to It. Our men had very few opportunities
of getting good shots at the rebels, as they hardly ever fired but
under cover of a stone wall, from behind a tree, or out of a house;
and the moment they had fired they lay down out of sight until
they had loaded again, or the column had passed. In the road in-
deed in our rear, they were most numerous, and came on pretty
close, frequently calling out, 'King Hancock forever. 9 Many of
them were killed in the houses on the road side from whence they
fired; in some of them seven or eight men were destroyed. Some
houses were forced open in which no person could be discovered,
but when the column had passed, numbers sallied out from some
place in which they had lain concealed, fired at the rear guard, and
augmented the numbers which followed us. If we had had time to
set fire to those houses many rebels must have perished in them,
but as night drew on Lord Percy thought it best to continue the
march. Many houses were plundered by the soldiers, notwith-
standing the efforts of the officers to prevent it. I have no doubt
this inflamed the rebels, and made many of them follow us farther
than they would otherwise have done. By all accounts some soldiers
who staid too long in the houses, were killed in the very act of
plundering by those who lay concealed in them. We brought in
about ten prisoners, some of whom were taken in arms. One or
two more were killed on the march while prisoners by the fire
of their own people." 32

Battered as his forces were, Lord Percy won the only tactical
duel on a command level that day. General Heath had ordered
the taking up of the planks of the Great Bridge across the Charles,
over which Percy's brigade had marched that morning, and the
use of them to barricade the bridge on the south or Brighton side
of the river. The Charles at that point was not fordable; and if
Percy had attempted to return to Boston by the same route that he
left, his brigade would have been driven into the river or annihi-
lated by the militia. However, if he turned off the Cambridge

200

THE BATTLE: RETREAT

road, to the east, north of Harvard., he could get to Charlestown,
directly across from the rest of Gage's army in Boston and within
the protection of the guns of the man-of-war Somerset in the river
basin. Heath anticipated this, and for the first time that day Percy
saw some of the militia in the open in a group. They stood bravely
across the Charlestown road, ready to force the British to take the
road to the Great Bridge, Percy stopped and ordered the cannon to
the fore and fired a shot. The militia scattered immediately to their
hidden positions. Percy resumed his march, and the militia "came
down to attack our right flank in the same straggling manner the
rest had done before. . . ," 33

It was dark when at last Percy got Ms unhappy brigade on the
hills of Charlestown at eight in the evening. He had taken four
hours to march his hobbling, frustrated army the twelve miles
from Lexington. His ammunition was almost entirely spent. He
had left behind the dead and many of his wounded. Some of his
soldiers, lingering too long as they pilfered the raided houses, were
taken prisoner by the provincials. A few appeared to have been
voluntary captives. Just before Percy's columns marched over the
thin neck of land between the Charles and Mystic rivers leading to
Charlestown, they were saved from the last and perhaps most
hazardous threat of the day by the miscalculation of the only
militia officer who took an unexcited view of the day's affairs.

Colonel Timothy Pickering, commanding the three hundred
men in the militia of Salem, fifteen miles north of Boston, was
brought the news of the firing at Lexington between eight and
nine in the morning: Pickering reasoned that if the British troops
had fired at six, then they would be almost back in Boston by nine
and that since Salem was farther from Boston than Lexington was,
there was no point in marching his company. With the minutemen
from other Essex county towns on the march, the Salem citizens
started exerting pressure on Pickering, and he finally suggested a
meeting of the selectmen to discuss the situation. Finally, "to
satisfy our fellow citizens," Pickering ordered his company to

201

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

march. 34 He still thought it a futile business, however, and stopped
the march a few miles out of town, expecting a messenger to come
along to say that the British were already back in Boston. None
came, and the minutemen of his company began to urge him on.
At last he yielded and started his march in earnest, getting to
Charlestown in time to see Percy's brigade just out of his reach
get to the protection of Bunker's Hill, where any provincial attempt
to dislodge him would have to survive the sixty-four guns of the
man-of-war Somerset.

Of the effect of Timothy Pickering's procrastination on Percy's
retreat, Washington wrote, May 31,17755 "If the retreat had not
been as precipitate as it was, and God knows it could not well
have been more so, the ministerial troops must have surrendered
or been totally cut off. For they had not arrived in Charlestown
(under cover of their ships) half an hour before a powerful body
of men from Marblehead and Salem was at their heels and must,
if they happened to be one hour sooner, inevitably intercepted
their retreat to Charlestown." 30

"As soon as the British gained Bunker's Hill, they immediately
formed in a line opposite to the neck," wrote General Heath;
"when our General [i.e., Heath] judged it expedient to order the
militia, who were now at the Common, to halt and give over the
pursuit, as any further attempt upon the enemy in that position
would have been futile." 36 Lieut. Barker, who had been with the
British expedition since the embarkation the night before, saw it
differently: "The rebels did not choose to follow us to the hill,
as they must have fought us on open ground and that they did not
like." 37

When the last shot was fired, the British had suffered 273
casualties (73 killed, 174 wounded, and 26 missing), a rate of
very nearly twenty per cent. The provincials, including militia
and such accidental presences as the drunks at Menotomy and
the feeble-minded Marcy, had 93 casualties (49 killed, 39
wounded, and 5 missing) a rate of about two and a half per cent

202

THE BATTLE; RETREAT

of the total militia participating. In addition, the British had de-
stroyed at Concord a wholly insignificant amount of gunpowder,
arms, and ammunition, burned three houses at Lexington, and
damaged a few others. Lieutenant Barker of the King's Own com-
pleted his indictment of the entire affair, with one last and solid
grumble:

"Thus ended this Expedition, which from beginning to end was
as iH planned and ill executed as it was possible to be; had we
not idled away three hours on the Cambridge Marsh waiting for
provisions that were not wanted, we should have had no inter-
ruption at Lexington, but by our stay the country people had got
intelligence and time to assemble. [Barker was, of course, wrong
in this: Parker had his men assembled three hours before the
British arrived, dismissed them, and recalled them. But in general,
Barker was right about the price that the British paid for Colonel
Smith's constant slowness.] We should have reached Concord soon
after daybreak, before they could have heard of us, by which we
should have destroyed more cannon and stores, which they had had
time enough to convey away before our arrival; we might also
have got easier back and not been so much harassed, as they would
not have had time to assemble so many people . . . Thus, for a
few trifling stores the Grenadiers and light Infantry had a march
of about fifty miles (going and returning) through an enemy's
country, and in all human probability must every man have been
cut off if the brigade had not fortunately come to their assist-

ance." 3 *

Lord Percy ended the day full of admiration for the provincial
miEtia and permitted himself a prophecy: "Whoever looks upon
them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken; they
have men amongst them who know very well what they are about,
having been employed as rangers against the Indians and Cana-
dians, and this country being much covered with wood and hilly,
is very advantageous for their method of fighting . . . You may
depend upon it, that as the rebels have now had time to prepare,

203

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

they are determined to go through with it, nor will the insurrection
here turn out so despicable as it is perhaps imagined at home." 30
Night came, after the long day, to the British now lying ex-
hausted on the Charlestown slopes, to the minutemen who en-
camped on the other side of Charlestown Neck, and to the little
towns of Lexington and Concord, now forever plunged into
history. It was a day full of mistakes. But it was a day also that
made its point.

204

7
THE USES OF ADVERSITY

"7 would wish to have all the impartial and
reasonable world on our side. I would wish to
have the humanity of the English nation engaged
in our cause. . . ."

SAMUEL ADAMS 1

As an example of military skill the nineteenth of April, 1775,
spoke poorly indeed for the Anglo-Saxon people. The British army
and the British command came close to providing a new standard
of incompetence on every level and in every respect: headquarters
staff work was inconceivably bad; except for Percy the field
commanders were slow, unimaginative,, and consistently wrong in
their decisions; the junior officers didn't know what to do, and
what they did do, they did badly; the private soldiers were dis-
graceful in their conduct disobedient, hysterical when they were
winning, and hysterical when they were losing. Yet there is some-
thing to be said for the spirit of the soldiers once they had a knowl-
edgeable commander in Lord Percy. They endured an unfamiliar
guerrilla war all the way from Concord to Boston, heavily out-
numbered and after a long march out of Boston, "without the in-
termission of five minutes altogether, I believe, upwards of eighteen
miles/' 2 And except for the flanking parties it was only occasionally

209

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

that the troops could see their enemy, most of whom were behind
walls although Benjamin Franklin, not much impressed when
the British complained to him about all the firing from behind
walls, asked quietly "whether there were not two sides to the
walls."*

As for the American militia, it could have destroyed most of
Smith's forces before they ever returned to Lexington and the
shelter of Lord Percy's relief brigade with its fieldpieces. It could
have inflicted much more disastrous losses upon the combined
British forces between Lexington and Cambridge. And it could
have shut off Percy's retreat, not only by way of the bridge over the
Charles, but also by way of Charlestown Neck. Totally without
strategy and only with improvised tactics and with every man in
command of himself when he got into the battle zone, the pro-
vincial action of the day amounted, in military terms, primarily
to a long harassment of a retreat that Percy ran his own way. The
inefficiency of the musket at more than sixty yards rendered the
overwhelming majority of the provincial firing harmless, and there
was no planning of the use of manpower to make the militia any
more effective.

If the day's battle was far from an exemplary military perform-
ance, however, it was close to perfect for the colonial cause in a
much larger and more important sense. In the first place, it shut
the British up in Boston so that they never again ventured far out
until the evacuation nearly a year later. This cleared the atmos-
phere considerably, because it forced the colonial Tories to take
refuge in Boston and it moved the Whigs in Boston to get out
into the country. Secondly, it brought to an end the specter gov-
ernment of Gage, who was reduced by seven o'clock on the evening
of April nineteenth to the position of the commanding officer of
a small garrison army occupying a single town three thousand
miles from home. Far greater in significance than either of these
was its immediately unifying effect, first, upon the province of
Massachusetts Bay and, second, upon all the colonies. And this

210

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

was the achievement of probably the most skillf ul propaganda and
political strategy in all American history.

For this purpose the events of April nineteenth, 1775, were
ideal. The British had marched out of Boston in force and "with
baggage and artillery." The British had fired to kill first. The
British had destroyed property. There had been bloodshed and
death the fact that there were more British than American lives
lost was insignificant in view of the eight provincials killed at dawn
on Lexington Common. All this established beyond any doubt that
the Americans had been the victims. At the same time and this
was equally important the Americans were also the victors. The
half-believed arguments of two years' standing that the American
colonists would never stand up to British regulars was thoroughly
shattered. The irresolution of the Massachusetts people was gone
in fourteen hours. The longed-for but thinly rooted chance of
permanent reconciliation was devastated.

Yet on the morning of April twentieth there were two wholly
different pictures of the preceding day in the minds of honest men.
To General Thomas Gage, still the legal and nominal Governor
of Massachusetts, it was a picture of subjects of the King in a
rebellious and treasonable uprising against His Majesty's troops
in the execution of their duties, resulting in the killing of seventy-
three of them. It was an action encouraged if not inspired by men
who had formed themselves, in contempt of all law and loyalty,
into an illicit government created to destroy the only duly con-
stituted government. But to the provincial leadership the picture
was one of a patient and oppressed people, finally put to the ul-
timate injustice of suffering the loss of their lives and properly
because they would not cower before the brutal enforcement of
unjust and immoral laws. Which of these pictures would endure in
the minds not only of the people of the colonies but of many of
those in Britain would have a determining effect upon the years
ahead.

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

11

The provincial leadership moved swiftly and effectively to win
this decisive propaganda battle. Adams and Hancock set out for
Philadelphia and the Continental Congress, the scheduled meeting
of which was now to become the first critical national forum of the
Revolution. The propaganda uses of Lexington and Concord
were left in the competent hands of Dr. Joseph Warren.

During the British retreat from Lexington, Dr. Warren was con-
spicuous as the only political leader who followed Percy's force
with the militia all the way to Charlestown, exposing himself to
enemy fire constantly. One bullet, during the brisk fighting on
the flat stretch through Menotomy, shot a pin from the doctor's
wig. His action as a fighting man, as an inspirer of the other
men, and as a physician rushing in under fire to aid the wounded
won the wholehearted admiration of all the militia, and the story
of his participation in the battle was spread all through eastern
Massachusetts. There is no question that on April twentieth the
thirty-three-year-old Boston physician was the most popular and
influential political figure in the colony.

The youngest of the provincial leaders. Warren had been edu-
cated at Harvard in the closing years of Edward Holyoke's in-
cumbency as president, taught at the grammar school in Roxbury,
studied medicine, and began his practice at twenty-three. Dr.
Warren was an attractive personality, friendly, somewhat elegant
in his manners, exceptionally well read, and genuinely democratic.
He developed considerable skill and reputation as a physician and
rapidly built up one of the largest practices in Boston among both
the rich merchants and the poor laborers. He paid little attention
to his financial affairs. After the passage of the Stamp Act, in
1765 the year after Warren started his practice he became in-
tensely interested in the constitutional aspects of the controversy
and took to spending all his evenings in study and discussion of

212

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

political philosophy. He finally concluded that the conduct of
England with regard to the American colonies was a rejection of
principles as old as British liberty. His contributions to the press
on the subject brought him to the attention of both the Samuel
Adams factions in Boston and the ministry in London, and he
soon became a frequenter of the political dubs. His dedication to
the idea of freedom was as passionate as Adams' own, but he saw
the job of the patriots to be a restoration of traditional British
rights and freedoms and not severance from England. To restore
those rights he was willing to fight, if necessary, but he was a
powerful believer in the strength of the pen and of the spoken word.
He became, while still in his twenties, a gifted and persuasive
orator, an effective and indefatigable committee worker, and
gradually the second-in-command to Adams. Unlike the latter, he
had as much enthusiasm for the physical tasks of the little faction
that strove to keep the fires of resistance alive as he did for the
intellectual chores.

After his young wife died in 1773 and left four small children.
Warren brought their grandmother to his house to care for them,
while he stood watch with the mechanics and tradesmen, some-
times patrolling the streets of Boston all night and then going
about his medical practice after breakfast in the morning. Although
he was urbane and gregarious, he was also fiery on occasion, quick-
tempered and impulsive and enormously courageous. Once when
he did not like the surly tone of a British sentry in challenging Mm,
he knocked the armed soldier down with his bare fist. Nothing
irritated him so much as the repeated British refrain, also taken up
in somewhat vociferous echoes by the domestic Tories, that the
colonials would run from British regular troops. "These fellows
say we won't fight; by heavens, I hope I shall die up to my knees
in blood." 4

By 1775, Dr. Warren had developed a skill in propaganda that
was matched only by that of Samuel Adams. He had, as Adams'
understudy, gone through the ten-year cold war in Boston among

213

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

the mobs, the tradesmen and mechanics., the political clubs, the
common men of the town; and he had learned a great deal about
the sway that emotions could have over their minds. He learned
how to fortify reason with appeals to the emotions and also learned
Samuel Adams' doctrine that facts were useful only to begin with,
that they have to be built upon, exaggerated, sometimes distorted,
that a fact in itself was a dead thing, that it came to life only with
the uses made of it. In March of 1 772, when apathy in the dispute
with Britain was at its worst, his fervid oration on the second
anniversary of the Boston Massacre had whipped up a new en-
thusiasm and, aided by an incendiary peroration by Adams, nearly
started a riot in the Old South Church against the British soldiers
present.

Gradually, Samuel Adams came to trust Warren more than
any of the patriot leaders, and Warren became in turn an extension
of Adams' own dedicated personality, though with infinitely more
grace. As Adams spent more and more time out of Boston after
the Port Act went into effect in May 1774, in order to cement
provincial feelings against the British and to create a provincial
governmental structure, he left the cause in Boston in the hands
of Warren.

Adams was always moving on, always widening the arena of
colonial resentment. After the Massacre of 1770, it was the town
of Boston he wanted to consolidate in a spirit of rebellion. After
the closing of the port in 1 774, it was the province of Massachusetts
Bay. After the punitive Regulating Act, it was all the New England
colonies. After Lexington, it was all the American colonies. He had
great work to do in Philadelphia, and he left the great work at
home to Dr. Warren.

Warren did not fail him. Although he had twice given the Boston
Massacre anniversary orations, he knew as well as John Adams
did that the event had furnished something less than pure martyrs.
The mischievous Boston ropewalkers, taunting and attacking
British patrols, had proved an impossibly difficult cluster of

214

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

sacrificial lambs to sell the other colonies, and in five years the
canonization of the victims had not got beyond a local consistory.
Now, however, on the morning of April twentieth, there were
simple country yeomen, good farmers and craftsmen, physicians
and ministers, who were the combatants men who could never
be accused of mobbism and irresponsible agitation. And they had
fallen not in the streets of Boston in the shadow of British barracks
but on country roads in front of their own houses, some of them on
their own doorsteps. Dr. Warren, keenly aware of the value of
every thread in the narrative of the day's events, started weaving
together a net of evidence, incidents, premises, and testimony that
accomplished in a matter of days what debate and oration had
failed to bring about in ten years.

On Thursday morning, April twentieth. Warren was in Cam-
bridge with the militia who were encamped there after chasing
Perc/s brigade back to Boston. The Provincial Congress would
not be meeting until Saturday, the twenty-second, and Warren
accordingly set up a civil headquarters, run by himself, as the first
American generals, headed by Artemas Ward, set up their military
headquarters. At noon there came a letter from the Committee of
Supplies, meeting at Concord, "expressing their joy at the event
of the preceding day." 5 Warren ignored the elation of the official
body, knowing full well that the one completely wrong way to
handle the event was to be anything but sorely grieved at it and to
allow too much or too premature emphasis to be put upon it as a
colonial victory. He himself wrote the first circular on Lexington
and Concord, and it went out to the towns of the colony, with the
authority of the Committee of Safety, of which he was chairman in
Hancock's absence, less than twenty-four hours after the battle
ended. There was none of the Committee of Supplies* "joy" in it.

"Gentlemen, The barbarous murders committed on our in-
nocent brethren, on Wednesday, the igth instant, have made it
absolutely necessary that we immediately raise an army to defend

215

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

our wives and our children from the butchering hands of an in-
human soldiery, who,, incensed at the obstacles they met with in
their bloody progress, and enraged at being repulsed from the field
of slaughter, will, without the least doubt, take the first opportunity
in their power to ravage this devoted country with fire and sword.
We conjure you, therefore, by all that is dear, by all that is sacred,
that you give all assistance possible in forming an army. Our all is
at stake. Death and devastation are the instant consequences of
delay. Every moment is infinitely precious. An hour lost may
deluge your country in blood and entail perpetual slavery upon the
few of your posterity who may survive the carnage. We beg and
entreat, as you will answer to God himself, that you will hasten
and encourage by all possible means the enlistment of men to form
the army, and send them forward to headquarters, at Cambridge,
with that expedition which the vast importance and instant ur-
gency of the affair demand"*

This is a remarkably skillful document. There is not a single
fact in it. There is not a place named, a detail revealed, a statistic
given. There is not a military objective stated nor a military action
reported. There is not an inkling of what happened, what was in-
volved, what the outcome was or even where. There is, indeed,
not a single reference, beyond the general language of the opening
phrase, to what had happened. It is concerned with what was
ahead rather than with what had occurred. It had one objective
the one objective Samuel Adams had worked on assiduously ever
since the First Provincial Congress assembled in October 1774
and the objective that was failing so miserably as the Second
Provincial Congress shrunk to a halfhearted end at Concord not
a week earlier the raising of a provincial army. Dr. Warren was
going to get the army.

His first move was wisely made. He knew that rumors were
flying all over Massachusetts and that the facts, however awful in
their significance, would be pale beside them. Four thousand

216

THE USES Or ADVERSITY

minutemen from forty towns had seen blood and death. Four

thousand reports were already getting back to virtually the entire

population of eastern Massachusetts. They would vary from slight

exaggerations, as oral reports in the first excitement of great events

almost always do, to the wildest stories of murder and despoliation.

They would be repeated and grow in the repetition. Dr. Warren,

in his circular, used language that could confirm any rumor and

in so doing put the rumors to work for him in his plea for the army.

Warren had the physician's cold diagnostic approach to all this.

No fanatic, he simply, and with the greatest objectivity, chose a

means he thought suitable to the end desired. On the very same day

that he used such terms as "the butchering hands of an inhuman

soldiery" in referring to the British army, he wrote General Gage

a gentle and strangely sad letter : u . . . Your Excellency, I believe,

knows very well the part I have taien in public affairs: I ever

scorned disguise. I think I have done my duty: some may think

otherwise; but be assured, sir, as far as my influence goes, every

thing that can reasonably be required of us to do shall be done,

and every thing promised shall be religiously performed. ... I

have many things that I wish to say to Your Excellency, and most

sincerely wish I had broken through the formalities which I

thought due to your rank, and freely had told you all I knew or

thought of public affairs; and I must ever confess, whatever may

be the event, that you generously gave me such opening as I now

think I ought to have embraced. . . ," 7 This young physician was

a knowing man, sensitive to the unhappy twists of history for aH

his active partisanship.

And the rumors were all that Dr. Warren had assumed. In the
absence of any authoritative news from Warren himself, every
man created his own version of the affair in letters, in verbal
reports, in abrupt "accounts" passed on to Committees of Cor-
respondence. "Rumor on rumor," an aged deacon of Brighton
wrote in his diary; "men and horses driving post up and down the
roads . . . people were in great perplexity. Women in distress

217

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

for their husbands and friends who had marched . . /' 8 From a
Boston Whig, John Andrews, there went out a story of massacre in
Jonas Clarke's meetinghouse on Lexington Common, "when the
soldiers shoved up the windows and pointed their guns and killed
three there." 9

One atrocity story after another spread through the province,,
then to the other colonies, and finally overseas. "Such is the bar-
barity of the king's troops that seven of the mercenaries, with their
bayonets fixed, entered the house of one Hindman, a husbandman
near Concord and inhumanly murdered his wife, who had laid
in but a few days, by stabbing her several parts of the body. . . ." 10
There was nobody, male or female, named Hindman even
wounded that day. There was no woman, in Concord or anywhere
else, so much as slapped by a British soldier. And in ConcoVd, of
course, the women were treated with such consideration that the
munitions raid was reduced almost to an absurdity. From another
quarter came a story of the invasion of a house where the British
"put the inhabitants, being thirteen in number, to the sword. This
gentleman bears ample testimony to the courage of the Americans
and observes that, out of the thirteen, one only pleaded for his
life, alleging that he could not possibly have annoyed the troops,
being confined to his bed with a broken thigh." 11 Not even a
single town, let alone one house, suffered as many as thirteen
deaths Lexington had the greatest number with nine and there
is no record of deaths by the sword. "They entered one house in
Lexington where were two old men, one a deacon of the church,
who was bed-ridden, and another not able to walk, who was sitting
in his chair; both these they stabbed and killed on the spot, as well
as an innocent child running out of the house." 12 No one was killed
in any house in Lexington, nor were any ancient immobile men or
little children; all Lexington fatalities were members of Captain
Parker's company.

Eyewitnesses saw things that never happened. "I saw some
houses that had been set on fire, and some old men, women and

218

THE USES OP ADVERSITY

children tliat had been killed," and "There was a number of
women and children burnt in their houses." 13 As the rumors had
it, only old men, women, and children were killed, except for a
cripple here and there. There were actually, of course, no women or
children even wounded, although an adolescent boy, sitting in the
window of a Charlestown house from which snipers fired on the
British in the last stages of their retreat at dusk, was shot in the
neck. Most all the men killed were actively engaged in combat,
and the average age was very low. Only two of the men killed on
Lexington Common were over thirty-one; and of the seven killed
in the Danvers company, all were under twenty-five, except the
captain, who was thirty-three. The only really old man. who met his
death from British action was Sudbur/s seventy-nine-year-old
Deacon Josiah Haynes. Far from being helpless, he was up at
dawn, marched, bearing his heavy musket, eight miles to the bridge
at Concord, and there berated his captain, John Nixon, for not
starting an attack ("If you don't go and drive them British from
that bridge, I shall call you a coward." 14 ), and joined enthusias-
tically in the pursuit of the British in the afternoon, when he was
killed while energetically reloading his musket to kill more of them.
The rumors reached an extreme in some towns that led to mass
evacuations in the face of the wildest imaginings of insatiable
British troops storming across the countryside, burning, robbing,
torturing and murdering all because nobody knew what had
happened and that the British army was even then licking its
wounds in impotent isolation in a now-besieged Boston, with no
intention and little hope of going anywhere. At Ipswich, twenty-
five miles northeast of Boston, someone started a rumor that British
soldiers were being landed from cutters and were already hacking
their way through the village. Within an hour the news that the
population of Ipswich was all but wiped out reached Beverly, ten
miles to the south. At a town meeting in Newbury, ten miles to
the north, a courier unceremoniously interrupted a long prayer of
the Reverend Thomas Gary with an alarm: "Turn out, for God's

219

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

sake, or you will all be killed. The regulars are marching on us;
they are at Ipswich now, cutting and slashing all before them." 15
As the alarm spread all through the towns of eastern Essex County,
old ladies were bundled in chaises off to the back country, papers
and valuables were hidden, men grabbed their muskets to march
somewhere anywhere and women and children hiked away
into the woods, leaving the villages completely deserted. The
townspeople of one town rushed to the next, taking up temporary
residences in houses vacated by populations who had in turn moved
on to the next town and up into the coastal towns of New Hamp-
shire. Oxen were yoked to haul household effects, and the streets
of empty villages were strewn with utensils and bedding that fell
off the carts and wagons. In Portsmouth the militia were notified
by seven different express riders to march in seven different di-
rections, and everyone seemed to think that Portsmouth itself was
doomed, due to the absence of its local militia leader, John
Sullivan: "Oh ! if Major Sullivan was here ! I wish to God Major
Sullivan was here!" 16 But Major Sullivan was on his way to the
Continental Congress in Philadelphia 3 and they posted a guard
around his house to save it from the invisible invader.

But the rumors did the work that Dr. Warren had in mind. A
provincial army sprang into being, after all the exhortations of the
Provincial Congress had failed, overnight. In a steady stream, from
twenty-five, fifty, a hundred miles away, militia set out for the camp
in the Harvard Yard at Cambridge, most of them reaching the
headquarters during the morning and afternoon of the twentieth.
General Artemas Ward left with the Shrewsbury militia and,
arriving in Cambridge, took over the command from "our
General" Heath. From Connecticut, Israel Putnam, lieutenant
colonel of all the Connecticut militia, mounted his plow horse in
the field where he was working and, without stopping to change
his clothes, rode the hundred miles to Cambridge in eighteen
hours. At New Haven, Captain Benedict Arnold of the Governor's
Guards threatened to break the lock of the town's ammunition

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THE USES OF ADVERSITY

store when the selectmen were slow in delivering powder and balls
for his company. Altogether some twenty thousand militia con-
verged on Cambridge and laid siege to Gage's four thousand
soldiers in Boston. Part of the provincial force, under the command
of Artemas Ward, stayed in Cambridge to stop any British move
out from Boston through Charlestown or across the Charles at
Cambridge. The remainder of the motley army, under Dr. John
Thomas, went to Roxbury to shut off the British from the mainland
at Boston Neck.

The directorate, the Committee of Safety with Dr. Warren as
its chairman, now had its army. But it had no illusions about it.
The twenty thousand men besieging Boston on April twentieth
had come in response to the most outrageous accounts of British
predacity, and it is of the nature of rumors of wickedness that the
wickedness turns out to be something less than fiendish. No one
could hope to keep up a sufficient fire of indignation to prevail
upon the twenty thousand militia to think of nothing else but
evening scores with the British particularly when in due course
it would have to be known that the British had come out at the
short end of the score anyhow. And most of the twenty thousand
had not marched to Boston to join an army, in any case. They
had left their fields and shops and studies to put a stop to a
specific act of British arrogance. They had brought no clothes or
food with them, had made no arrangements for the discharge of
their responsibilities at home, and had conceived of their under-
taking as the carrying out of their individual decisions to "go to
meet the British." Many of them were magnificently unfit for army
campaigns and prolonged service. There were very old men like
Deacon Haynes, young men who were little more than boys,
married men with large families who must be supported, even
clergymen who had to get back to their meetinghouses by the next
Sabbath.

Dr. Warren was fully aware that many of this varied throng,
whom he was already having trouble feeding, would depart as

221

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

spontaneously as they had come, most of them without even
giving any notice of their intention. Milling around Cambridge,
they were almost wholly unorganized. Some, of course, had a com-
pany structure, with their elected officers to whom they gave no
real binding authority. Others came in little groups of individuals,
every man his own general, and they would stay as long as they saw
fit and then go home again. Some were unarmed, there to see what
all the excitement was about or else to carry voluntary food
offerings to fighting men from their home towns. "There were also
in the aforesaid Company a number of aged men, and some unable
to bear arms, who rode to Cambridge on the day of alarm
and the day following to carry provision to those who stood in
need. . . . 9517 When Dr. Warren's Committee of Safety concluded
that the strategy would be to keep the British locked up in Boston,
some militia officers simply refused to go along with the decision,
among them Timothy Pickering, who was so reluctant the day
before to march his Salem men all the way to the Charles. "To me
the idea was new and unexpected," he wrote. "I expressed the
opinion which at the moment occurred to me that the hostilities
of the preceding day did not render a civil war inevitable : That
a negotiation with General Gage might probably effect a present
compromise and therefore that the immediate formation of an
army did not appear to me to be necessary." 18 Pickering went
home, and so did most of his men.

From all this, Warren saw that he must first get the militia that
Benjamin Thompson, one of Gage's informers, called "that mass
of confusion" 19 under some sort of authority, then be sure that
they could be counted upon to stay in service, and finally eliminate
those who should or could not undertake unlimited military duties.
He moved swiftly to accomplish all three at a meeting of the
Committee of Safety on April twenty-first.

The first two, acknowledgment of authority and duration of
service, were taken care of by the adoption of a form of enlistment:
"I, A.B., do hereby solemnly engage and enlist myself as a soldier in

222

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

the Massachusetts service, from the day of my enlistment to the
last day of December next, unless the service should admit of a
discharge of a part or the whole sooner, which shall be at the
discretion of the Committee of Safety; and I hereby promise to
submit myself to all the orders and regulations of the Army, and
faithfully to observe and obey all such orders as I shall receive
from any superior officer." 20 The third of Warren's objectives,
culling a manageable force from the mass teeming around Cam-
bridge, was dealt with in the Committee's next action. Since Gage's
force was only about four thousand and it was virtually immobi-
lized by the geography of Boston, Warren concluded that a pro-
vincial force of eight thousand would be adequate for the im-
mediate job of keeping the British isolated on the peninsula. This
meant that he needed little more than a third of the men who
responded to the Lexington alarm. And he took care that the
Committee's resolution creating the army left room for qualitative
as well as quantitative criteria: "Resolved, that there be immedi-
ately enlisted, out of the Massachusetts Forces, eight thousand
eff ective men, to be formed into Companies, to consist of a Cap-
tain, one Lieutenant, one Ensign, four Sergeants, one Fifer, one
Drummer, and seventy rank and file; nine Companies to form a
Regiment, to be commanded by a Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel
and Major; each Regiment to be composed of men suitable for the
service, which shall be determined by a Muster-Master or Muster-
Masters, to be appointed for that purpose. Said officers and men to
continue in the service of the Province for the space of seven
months from the time of enlistment, unless the safety of the Prov-
ince will admit of their being discharged sooner; the Army to be
under proper rules and regulations." 21

This was a sensible and manageable plan. But as soon as it
reached the officers of the old companies milling around outside
the Committee doors, there were complaints that the size of the
companies proposed was too big, the obvious result being that many
present officers would have to be reduced in rank. With quick

223

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

adaptability, the Committee immediately reduced the size of the
new companies to fifty men and avoided squabbling. General
Ward created a council of war, doled out assignments to officers,
deployed his men; and Samuel Adams, poking along the highways
of western Massachusetts toward Philadelphia with John Hancock,
at last had a provincial army to break down the decade-old barrier
between the idea and the reality of organized forcible resistance
to Great Britain.

iii

On Saturday, April twenty-second, the Provincial Congress,
parent body and source of authority of the Committee of Safety,
met at Concord and then adjourned to Watertown in order to be
near the fledgling army. In the absence of Hancock, Dr. Warren
was unanimously elected its president, and he proceeded to cope
with problems that he had been unable to attend during the short,
harried sessions of the Committee of Safety. First among these was
the next stage of the propaganda war.

Before the guns of Earl Percy's retreat were silenced, the three
uses of the battle of Lexington were joyously apparent to the
provincial leadership : as an immediate and unarguable call for a
provincial army; as a dramatic event behind which to consolidate
a public opinion that had been wavering and indifferent; and,
finally, as an act of aggressive violence by British troops that would
divide the English in the home country on support of the policies
of the Crown and the North ministry. Through the Committee of
Safety, within forty-eight hours of the battle, Dr. Warren had
promptly and efficiently brought about the provincial army. He
moved now, through the Provincial Congress, to make the most
of the propaganda uses of the battle.

This involved innovations, in the political history of wars, of
which Dr. Warren and his colleagues were fully capable. Never
before had wars required a direct verdict of the people for their

224

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

prosecution. Never had a war been started without even a govern-
ment to direct it. Never had it been of such urgent importance to
get the case before a people. For this the vague communique
and the wild rumors were totally inadequate useful as they had
proved to be for more immediate purposes. What was needed was
foolproof documentation that the colonists were innocent but
honorable victims, the King's troops ruthless and unreasoning
aggressors. And all this had to be done before the British, saddled
with the red tape of formal militarism, could get their version of
the affair to the people. Accordingly, at its afternoon session on
April twenty-second the Congress appointed a committee of nine
to take depositions, "from which a full account of the transactions
of the troops under General Gage, in their route to and from
Concord, &c., on Wednesday last, may be collected." 22 The next
day it appointed a committee to construct an official narrative of
the event.

On April twenty-third, the Sunday following Wednesday's
battle, the congressional committee went to Lexington and spent
three days in taking depositions from the participants in the
battle, supplementing them with other accounts from Concord,
civilians on the line of retreat, and British captives. In all, the
Committee interviewed ninety-seven people in three days and got
signed and sworn statements from all of them in twenty-one
documents. They took a corps of justices of the peace with them to
administer the oaths to the deponents and then got a notary
public to certify the good faith of the justices of the peace. The
signatories to the individual depositions varied from single de-
ponents, like Captain Parker, to groups of four to over thirty.
The gist of all the depositions was that not a provincial at either
Lexington or Concord fired until the British had fired first. This
point was not omitted from a single deposition, and it was obviously
an instruction of the Committee of the Congress to the deponents
to be specific on this point, since several of the deponents had not
in fact been in a position to know who fired first.

225

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

The committee sent to Concord and to Medf ord to get deposi-
tions from three British captives; John Bateman, a private of the
Fifty-second Regiment, James Harr, a private of the Fourth
(Bang's Own) Regiment, and Lieutenant Edward Thornton
Gould, also of The Kong's Own. The committee apparently felt
that testimony from men of the British army would lend weight
and added authority to the provincial depositions. It was, indeed,
a good thought and had its effect. Bateman was an eagerly satisfy-
ing deponent. His company was not in the van of the march on
Lexington Common, and from his position down the road toward
Boston not only distance but the great bulk of the meetinghouse
would have prevented him from seeing who fired first or, until the
gunsmoke rose, if anyone fired at all. Nevertheless, Bateman was
the most positive of witnesses: ". . . being nigh the meetinghouse
in said Lexington, there was a small party of men gathered to-
gether in that place when our troops marched by, and I testify and
declare, that I heard the word of command given to the troops to
fire, and some of said troops did fire, and I saw one of said small
party lay dead on the ground nigh said meetinghouse, and I
testify that I never heard any of the inhabitants so much as fire one
gun on said troops." 23 James Marr and Lieutenant Gould of The
King's Own were also in the rear at Lexington and claimed no
knowledge of who fired first, but they both testified that the British
fired first as the minutemen approached the North Bridge at
Concord.

Except for the uncommonly good eyesight of all ninety-seven
deponents in observing, in the pale light of dawn from odd
positions and amid the turmoil of dashing horses, rushing soldiers
and widely scattered provincial militia and spectators, exactly
where the first shot came from, the twenty-one depositions were
brief, crisp, economic in detail, and without dramatic accusations.
No atrocities were charged to the British; and some were careful
to limit the destruction of houses and property by the troops, al-
though others claimed, at the same time, rather vaguely that they

226

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

"committed damage, more or less, to almost every house from
Concord to Charlestown." 24 The depositions were delivered to the
Congress by the committee on April twenty-sixth, and the official
narrative was meanwhile composed by another committee.

The narrative was far more emotional and accusatory than the
depositions, in places somewhat childish in the innocence at-
tributed to the provincials and almost fantastic in its version of the
retreat. The chairman of the committee appointed to compose
the narrative had reason to show ardor in the patriot's cause. He
was Dr. Benjamin Church, the same member of the Congress
who had been selling Gage its secrets, including the location of the
colonial munitions, right up until the eve of the march to Concord.
Church, on the day after the battle, was met in Cambridge by
Paul Revere, to whom it seemed that Church was excessively
anxious to demonstrate his patriotism. "The day after the Battle
of Lexington, I met him in Cambridge, when he showed me
some blood on his stocking, which he said spirted on him from a
man who was killed near him, as he was urging the Militia on." 25
Then in his fortieth year, Church was dependent upon the moneys
paid him by General Gage as an informer. With the outbreak of
hostilities he was in all the more advantageous position as a
member of both the Congress and war committees to command
heavy prices for the information he sold. Dr. Church was ap-
pointed to the narrative committee at the session of Congress on
Sunday, April twenty-third. On the previous Friday, just two days
after the battle, he was sitting with the Committee of Safety at
Cambridge, when he startled Dr. Warren by announcing his
intention to go into Boston the next day. Dr. Church's declaration
"set them all a staring. Dr. Warren replied, 'Are you serious, Dr.
Church? They will hang you if they catch you in Boston!* He
replied, *I am serious and determined to go at all adventures/ " 26

So Dr. Church spent aU day Saturday and part of Sunday in
Boston, Warren and the Committee of Safety ordering him to
bring medicine back for the wounded as long as he was determined

227

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

to go. Church told the suspicious Revere, when he got back, that
he was taken prisoner and sent to Gage's headquarters, but Revere
later talked to Deacon Caleb Davis, of Boston, who happened to
see Church emerge from Gage's house that morning in amiable
and friendly conversation with the General, "like persons who had
been long acquainted." Church got back from his traitorous visit
in time to accept the appointment to the committee to write the
official narrative.

Not even the most fanatical of those who despised the British
and advanced the colonial cause were quite capable of Church's
condemnation of the British and admiration of the childlike
Americans that he invented. Fresh from Gage's headquarters, he
presided over the composing of the official American report to
the people of the colonies :

"On the nineteenth day of April, one thousand seven hundred
and seventy- five, a day to be remembered by dl Americans of the
present generation, and which ought, and doubtless will be handed
down to ages yet unborn, the troops of Britain, unprovoked, shed
the blood of sundry of the loyal American subjects of the British
king in the field of Lexington. Early in the morning of said day,
a detachment of the forces under General Gage, stationed at
Boston, attacked a small party of the inhabitants of Lexington
and some other towns adjacent, the detachment consisting of about
nine hundred men, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Smith:
The inhabitants of Lexington and the other towns were about one
hundred, some with and some without firearms, who had collected
upon information that the detachment had secretly marched from
Boston the preceding night, and landed on Phipps*s Farm in
Cambridge, and were proceeding on their way with a brisk pace
towards Concord, as the inhabitants supposed, to take or destroy
a quantity of stores deposited there for the use of the colony; sundry
peaceable inhabitants having the same night been taken, held by
force, and otherwise abused on the road, by some officers of General

228

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

Gage's army, which earned a just alarm and a suspicion that some
fatal design was immediately to be put into execution against
them. This small party of the inhabitants were so far from being
disposed to commit hostilities against the troops of their sovereign,
that unless attacked, they were determined to be peaceable spec-
tators of this extraordinary movement; immediately on the ap-
proach of Colonel Smith with the detachment under his command,
they dispersed; but the detachment, seeming to thirst for blood,
wantonly rushed on, and first began the hostile scene by firing on
this small party, by which they killed eight men on the spot and
wounded several others before any guns were fired upon the troops
by our men. Not content with this effusion of blood, as if malice
had occupied their whole souls, they continued the fire, until all
of this small party who escaped the dismal carnage were out of the
reach of their fire. Colonel Smith, with the detachment, then pro-
ceeded to Concord, where a part of this detachment again made
the first fire upon some of the inhabitants of Concord and the
adjacent towns, who were collected upon a bridge at this just
alarm, and killed two of them and wounded several others, before
any of the provincials there had done one hostile act. Then the
provincials, roused with zeal for the liberties of their country,
finding life and every thing dear and valuable at stake, assumed
their native valor and returned the fire, and the engagement on
both sides began. Soon after the British troops returned towards
Charlestown, having first committed violence and waste on public
and private property, and on their retreat was joined by another
detachment of General Gage's troops, consisting of about a thou-
sand men, under the command of Earl Percy, who continued the
retreat; the engagement lasted through the day; and many were
killed and wounded on each side, though the loss on the part of the
British troops far exceeded that of the provincials. The devastation
committed by the British troops on their retreat, the whole of the
way from Concord to Charlestown, is almost beyond description;
such as plundering and burning of dwelling-houses and other

229

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

buildings, driving into the street women in child-bed, killing old
men in their houses unarmed. Such scenes of desolation would
be a reproach to the perpetrators, even if committed by the most
barbarous nations, how much more when done by Britons famed
for humanity and tenderness: And all this because these colonies
will not submit to the iron yoke of arbitrary power / J>27

This version of the battle by the Church committee was ob-
viously written while the committee on depositions was still in
Lexington, and it was ready for release with the depositions, none
of which were quoted in the narrative. Church had the details of
the British force very clear none of the deponents did and he
also knew that Smith was in command and exactly where Phipps'
Farm his force had debarked at Cambridge. And if he knew
too much about the British, he also protested too much on behalf of
the Americans.

Nowhere in the narrative is there any reference to militia or
minutemen or any military organization or military action at all.
The provincials are all "a small party of the inhabitants . . . some
with and some without fire-arms," or just "peaceable spectators,"
or "inhabitants . . . collected at the bridge." There is no mention
of Captain Parker's company lined up in ranks on Lexington
Common, or the Concord minutemen parading up the Lexington
road with drum and fife "to meet the British," or those four
hundred militia marching down the hill to force the North Bridge
held perilously by Captain Parsons' thirty-five regulars. Not until
the provincials "assumed their native valor" on the British retreat
is there any suggestion that this was a tough breed of men not
much inclined to be peaceable spectators.

But if Church's narrative conceded the provincials some belliger-
ence on the retreat, it had nothing but contempt for the British,
who, according to this version, were occupied not in saving their
own Eves under somewhat difficult circumstances but in "the burn-
ing of dwelling-houses and other buildings, driving into the street

230

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

women in child-bed, killing old men in their houses unarmed."
Actually, in some fifty miles of marching, half of it a running
battle, the British burned three houses, according to the returns
made to the Provincial Congress 28 all three at the Lexington
staging area where Lord Percy was reforming the British forces for
the retreat to Charlestown. The houses had been evacuated and
seemed to have been burned reluctantly by Percy after Smith and
Pitcaim had told him how the provincials used the houses as
fortresses all along the route of the march. There was, of course,
some looting by the British flankers who searched the houses for
snipers, but again the damage returns make it very small. The
British troops were near exhaustion by then and under constant
fire, and they had neither the time to do much selective looting
nor the strength to carry unnecessary burdens as they stumbled to
the protection of the Charlestown hills, In any case, the com-
mittee of the Provincial Congress "appointed to estimate the dam-
ages done at Cambridge, Lexington and Concord" reported that
the total, including the three houses burned at Lexington,
amounted to a little over 3000, and most of the inhabitants
made very generous estimates of the value of such casualties as
"two large moose skins" and "one lawn apron." 29

The charge of "driving into the street women in child-bed" was
one of the most popular features of the Church narrative. When
Dr. Warren edited and rewrote it for the consumption of the
English in an open letter "To The Inhabitants of Great Britain"
and when the American newspapers rewrote it, the women's plight
was rendered even more pitiable by describing them as "naked,"
although why good Massachusetts mothers should be lying around
naked on a mid-April afternoon is not apparent. This example
of British inhumanity was not to be found in any of the depositions
secured by the Congress ; but after it was reported in the narrative,
a deposition was sought from Hannah Adams, the wife of Joseph
Adams, the Cambridge deacon who had fled from his house and
left his wife and six children unprotected because he was afraid

231

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

that he would be killed. The Adams house was in Cambridge in
an area where the British retreat underwent the heaviest sniper
fire of the entire day. According to Hannah Adams' own account,
the British flank infantrymen searching the house said, "We will
not hurt the woman if she will go out of the house, but we will
surely burn it." 30 The infantrymen were, of course, under orders
to burn houses protecting snipers, and they had just seen the
deacon who was a sniper, for all they knew dart from the
house to the Reverend Samuel Cooke's barn. If Mrs. Adams was
bedded from childbirth, it was an unusually long accouchement;
the Cambridge vital records show that the baby was born nineteen
days earlier. 31 And even though it was her tenth child and she was
forty-five, Mrs. Adams was apparently a rugged woman, living
to the good age of seventy-three. In any case, Mrs. Adams was
actually fully dressed when the soldiers came to her house; and
she had two daughters, Rebecca, twenty-two, and Susanna, seven-
teen, helping her and the child, according to her daughter's
account in later years. 32 She went to an outer building until the
troops left and then went back into the house again. This was the
only case in which, according to Dr. Warren's information to the
English people, "women in child-bed were driven by the soldiery
naked in the streets." 83

The charge with regard to old men was also unsubstantiated
by any of the depositions taken by the committee. Most of the old
men of the day showed astonishing agility in chasing the British,
were faster at loading and firing than their younger fellows, and,
like old Samuel Whittemore of Cambridge, displayed admirable
surviving powers even after being left for dead. So once more the
provincials sought substantiation of the charges after they were
made. The "old men" turned out not to have been very old and
not to have been "in their houses unarmed." They were Jason
Winship, forty-three, and Jabez Wyman, thirty-nine, the jovial
brothers-in-law, who sat drinking in Benjamin Cooper's tavern,
insisting that there was time for just one more. There had been

232

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

intense provincial firing from the environs of the Cooper Tavern,
when the British, according to the delayed deposition of the
Coopers, "entered the house, where we and two aged gentlemen
were all unarmed. We escaped for our lives into the cellar. The
two aged gentlemen were immediately, most barbarously and in-
humanly murdered by them." A local clergyman, appraising this
atrocity, said that "both died like fools." 34 But they were the only
"aged" unarmed men slain.

Thus, the official narrative went out to the province, the
colonies, Great Britain, and the world. Couriers, in a chain oper-
ation with fresh men and horses ready at key points, carried the
news down the Atlantic coast to Georgia. The newspapers, all
of them weeklies, published their stories, borrowing liberally from
each other and embroidering the apocryphal details of atrocities.
On the Monday after the battle, accounts were in the Connecticut
and New York papers; on Wednesday, in the Pennsylvania papers;
on Thursday, in those of Maryland; on Saturday, in Dixon and
Hunter's Virginia Gazette; and on through the Carolinas, until the
news reached the Georgia Gazette in. Savannah. Many of the
papers, unwilling to wait for their weekly publication date, got
out handbills as soon as the news was received. Using inverted rules
to make heavy black borders, decorated with rows of black coffins
to represent the dead and bearing such headlines as "Bloody
Butchery by the British Troops/' 35 the press accounts, based
upon the official narrative, wiped out overnight all the issues of the
long debate on taxation and representation. The voices of the
orators were drowned out by the outraged cries of the propagan-
dists repeated from the press in appeals to the emotions. Vast
indignation over a professional soldiery turned loose to murder
and ravage was fed by the quick, inevitable multiplication of the
charges of British wickedness. Massachusetts, with its population
exclusively made up of unarmed old men and of women in the
midst of childbirth, became the rallying cry of a "There but for
the grace of God go you" sort of barrage from the whole Whig

233

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

press. IsaiaJi Thomas, who had moved Ms Massachusetts Spy press
out of Boston across the Charles on the Sunday night before the
battle, set up shop in Worcester and fired a broadside that was
reprinted in a score of papers thoughout the colonies: "AMER-
ICANS ! forever bear in mind the BATTLE OF LEXINGTON I
where British Troops, unmolested and unprovoked, wantonly
and in a most inhuman manner fired upon and killed a number
of our countrymen, then robbed them of their provisions, ran-
sacked, plundered and burned their houses! Nor could the tears
of defenceless women, some of whom were in the pains of child-
birth, and cries of helpless babes, nor the prayers of old age,
confined to beds of sickness, appease their thirst for blood ! or
divert them from their DESIGN of MURDER and ROB-
BERY!" 88 And in New York, where a throng marched on the
City Hall to demand the keys to the armory when they heard the
news, the exhortation went out to "Let every inhabitant consider
what he is likely to suffer if he falls into the hands of such cruel and
merciless wretches." 87

Here was the real victory of Lexington. The little town, some-
what removed from affairs, that had gone about its quiet business
for a century and a half, was suddenly a symbol that united an
irresolute people in a spirit of revolt that was to end only with
independence. For the propaganda uses made of Lexington were
carried out with such skill that in the wars of the future, which
were impossible to carry on without the consent and support of
the people, the same essential pattern was followed.

iv

Even as he was presiding over this war of propaganda, Dr.
Joseph Warren held a contained view of the outbreak of hostilities,
and he saw it still as a civil war loyal citizens 5 fighting an usurpa-
tory government. In his mind, it was of paramount importance
that his fellow subjects in Great Britain have the provincial version

234

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

of the beginning of hostilities before the routine, military man's
report of Gage got there. On April twenty-sixth, one week after
the battle, after he had all the depositions at hand, he himself wrote
the account that went to the British people, together with copies
of the depositions. In it he made an outright appeal to His
Majesty's subjects in England to make common cause with their
brothers in the colonies. He followed a brief account of the nine-
teenth and its events with a quiet overture to the bonds that stiU
united them:

"We cannot think that the honour, wisdom and valour of Britons
will suffer them longer to be inactive spectators of measures in
which they themselves are so deeply interested; measures pursued
in opposition to the solemn protests of many noble Lords, and
expressed sense of conspicuous Commoners, whose knowledge
and virtue have long characterized them as some of the greatest
men in the Nation; measures executing contrary to the interest,
Petitions and Resolves of many large, respectable and opulent
Counties, Cities and Boroughs, in Great Britain; measures highly
incompatible with justice, but still pursued with a specious pretence
of easing the nation of its burden; measures which, if successful,
must end in the ruin and slavery of Britain, as well as the persecuted
American colonies.

"We sincerely hope that the great Sovereign of the Universe,
who hath so often appeared for the English nation, will support
you in very rational and manly exertion with these Colonies, for
saving it from ruin; and that in a constitutional connection with
the Mother Country, we shall soon be altogether a free and happy
people. 5338

It was, of course, Warren's purpose to hinder the North ministry
in its conduct of a war three thousand miles from home, particu-
larly in the pressing problems of raising moneys from domestic
revenues to pay for it and men to cross the seas to fight it. This
could be, in his judgment, a most unpopular war among Britons,
the more so if they thought it unjust.

235

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

In Its determination to get the provincial version of the affair to
England first, the Provincial Congress commissioned a schooner
belonging to a Salem merchant, Richard Derby, and commanded
by his son, John, to take copies of the Salem Gazette, the official
narrative letter, the depositions, and letters of instructions to the
American agents, Arthur Lee and Benjamin Franklin. On April
twenty-seventh, Dr. Warren gave Captain John Derby his orders
from the Committee of Safety:

Resolved: that Captain Derby be directed and he hereby is
directed to make for Dublin or any other good port in Ireland, and
from thence to cross to Scotland or England and hasten to London.
This direction is given that so he may escape all enemies that may
be in the chops of the channel to stop the communication of the
Provincial intelligence to the agent. He will -forthwith deliver his
papers to the agent on reaching London.

/. Warren, CHAIRMAN

P.S. You are to keep this order a profound secret from every person
on earth?*

Captain Derby sailed from Salem in his little schooner in the
darkness of the night of April twenty-eighth. Four days earlier Gage
had written sparse reports to the Viscount Barrington, the Secre-
tary at War, and to Earl Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for
the Colonies (he began the former with the fine understatement,
"I have now nothing to trouble your lordship with, but of an
affair that happened here on the igth instant . . ." 40 ). On the
twenty-fourth Gage dispatched his reports on the cargo-laden, two
hundred ton packet, Sukey. John Derby's assignment was to beat
the packet to the British Isles.

The Derby schooner, Quero, was a light, fast ship of sixty-two
tons' burden, carrying a small crew and no cargo. The Derby
family had been Salem shipmasters for over a century, and Captain
John Derby, then thirty-four, was an outstandingly brilliant

236

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

mariner. He made the westward crossing in four weeks, sailed
Quero up a stream at the Isle of Wight, where she would be un-
noticed, and then took a public transport to Southampton whence
he made his way to London. Derby's boldness in ignoring Warren's
directions to land in Ireland and in sailing under the noses of the
British navy station at Portsmouth was almost arrogant, but by
doing so he got to London on May twenty-eighth. He took his
papers, with letters from Dr. Warren, to Arthur Lee. Copies of
the narrative and depositions were made quickly and the originals
placed in the custody of the Lord Mayor of London, the notorious
radical, John Wilkes. Dr. Franklin, his mighty and persistent
efforts at conciliation having come to nothing after ten years in
London as the ambassador extraordinary of the colonies, had
already sailed for home.

On the day after Derby's arrival, the news of Lexington
colonial version was all over England, where support of the
North ministry and its colonial policy was far from unanimous. The
American colonies were the richest possessions of the British, and
the merchants of England viewed the drift toward war as suicidal.
Political liberals were openly sympathetic with the colonial point
of view on basic freedoms common to all Englishmen. The
Quakers and other religious groups were opposed to war on any
account. Moreover, England was badly prepared for any war.
There was a heavy debt still from the war with France. Domestic
taxes in Britain were already high. Recruitment for army service
was sagging dangerously, particularly for overseas duty in the
colonies. To this England the news of Lexington was of tremendous
impact. The London Evening Post published an extra, reprinting
the Salem Gazette's account and some of the depositions. The
combined efforts of the American agent and the Lord Mayor
resulted in an incredibly swift spreading of the news by bulletins
and word of mouth. The former colonial governor, Thomas
Hutchinson, went to Lord Dartmouth with the news. On the
next day Dartmouth issued a government bulletin saying that the

237

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

news was unofficial and the government had had no information
from Gage. The f ollowing day Lee published a notice that if anyone
doubted the accounts, original affidavits confirming the news could
be seen at the Lord Mayor's mansion. The historian, Edward
Gibbon, independent member of Parliament, wrote, "This looks
serious and is indeed so, 3 ' but he saw hope in the fact that "the
month of May is the time for sowing Indian corn" and the
Americans would face famine if they interrupted the planting to
fight a war. 41 The Reverend John Home, former vicar of New
Brentford and founder of the Society for Supporting the Bill of
Rights, issued an appeal for funds in which he repeated literally
the claims of "our beloved American fellow-subjects, who, faithful
to the character of Englishmen, preferring death to slavery, were,
for that reason only, inhumanly murdered by the King's Troops
at or near Lexington and Concord." He sent the money that he
raised to Franklin and then was himself sent off to King's Bench
Prison for his pains.

The British Government, for two weeks, did nothing in the
absence of any information from Gage. Efforts were made to find
Derby and his ship. Derby flashed in and out of London as he
pleased but disappeared completely when his presence was desired
by Dartmouth. Agents were sent by the government to find his ship,
and Southampton was searched thoroughly without result. Mean-
while, the Salem Gazette story was gaining wider and wider circu-
lation, the Gentleman 3 s Magazine even crediting the elusive Cap-
tain Derby with bringing government dispatches. Dartmouth's
undersecretary, John Pownall, took the story directly to the King
at Kew, telling the monarch that he bore "bad news." The King
spent his temper on Pownall, telling Dartmouth that the expression
"bad news" left a lot to be desired and that all Pownall would
ever be fit for was to carry out the orders of others. But the King's
real frustration was better reflected in a rather pointless letter that
Dartmouth at last dispatched to Gage pointless because Gage
could not possibly get it for four or five weeks: ". . . It appears,

238

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

upon the fullest inquiry, that this account, which is chiefly taken
from a Salem newspaper, has been published by a Captain Derby,
who arrived on Friday or Saturday at Southampton, in a small
vessel in ballast, directly from Salem ; and from every circumstance
relating to this person and the vessel, it is evident he was employed
by the Provincial Congress to bring this account, which is plainly
made up for the purpose of conveying every possible prejudice
and misrepresentation of the truth . .

"At the same time it is very much to be lamented that we have
not some account from you of this transaction, which I do not
mention from any supposition that you did not send the earliest
intelligence of it, for we know from Derby that a vessel with dis-
patches from you sailed four days before him. We expect the
arrival of that vessel with great impatience. . . ," 42

During the first weeks of June, as other ships from America
brought oral confirmation, the ministry was shaken in its official
view that maybe the whole story was fictitious. Yet it persisted in
refusing to recognize the existence of the event and left the English
people more and more convinced that their American fellow sub-
jects had been done a great wrong an impression that the minis-
try was never able to alter.

Finally, two weeks after Derb/s Quero shipped up the Isle of
Wight inlet, the heavily loaded Sukey, bearing General Gage's
dispatches, got to Southampton. With regard to the security of his
all but useless communications, Gage had gone to great pains. He
had, of course, foreseen the probability that the provincials would
want to get their own account of April nineteenth to London, but
he credited them with little imagination or even, despite his
experience of the night of the eighteenth, with much skill at
espionage. Actually, the provincials knew that his dispatches were
aboard Sukey when they commissioned Derby's schooner. Gage,
however, assumed that they would attempt to communicate with
the colony's agents in London by the same ship that he used.
Accordingly, he sent orders to the captain to intercept all mail

239

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

addressed to Franklin and Lee and send it back to Boston and to
seize all "other suspicious letters, to be put under cover to the
Secretary of State." 48

After all the excitement aroused in England by the spirited
account brought by Captain Derby, General Gage's account fell
as a dull anticlimax that served only to confirm the former. The
official dispatches consisted of Gage's account, which was an
abrupt minimizing of the entire episode, the reports that he had
from Earl Percy and Lieutenant Colonel Smith, and an account
of the British losses. The press leaped with delight and disdain on
some of the general's locutions, which sought to convey the im-
pression that it was no defeat. The American accounts had given
a vivid picture of the inglorious British retreat that had become
familiar to every English newspaper reader. Of this, Gage said
only that Lord Percy "brought the troops to Charlestown." 44
Commented the London Press: "Whether they marched like mutes
at a funeral, or whether they fled like the relations and friends of
the present ministry ... is left entirely to the conjecture of the
reader: though it should seem that a scattering fire, poured in
upon a retreating enemy for fifteen miles together, would natur-
ally, like goads applied to the sides of oxen, make them march off
as fast as they could. 9 ' 45

The British Government did nothing to improve the ridiculous
situation in which it found itself so far as public opinion went.
Dr. Warren's skilled handling of the news for British consumption
had tended to unite the American people with the people of
England. Not only in his letter to the inhabitants of Great Britain
but in his covering letters to Lee and Franklin, he used such terms
as "fellow subjects," "our royal Sovereign,' 3 and "the united efforts
of both Englands." He carefully separated the English people from
the troops and, with infinitely less justification, the King from his
ministers. He credited the English with the character that would
lead them to resist the same kind of military force in England that
the farmers did in Massachusetts. But the North ministry, in re-

240

THE USES OF ADVERSITY

leasing Gage's version of the affair, fell to the use of such terms as
"rebels" and "viffians," and the British press laughed them out of
a hearing. And so Great Britain moved into one of the most fateful
wars in history with the enemy's achieving a triumphant public-
opinion success right in the home realm. A month later the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, writing rebuKngly to Gage,
was still hurt by it: "On the tenth of last month in the morning,
Lieutenant Nunn arrived at my office with your dispatch con-
taining an account of the transactions on the igth of April, of
which the public had before received intelligence by a schooner,
to all appearance sent by the enemies of Government on purpose
to make an impression here, by representing the affair between the
King's troops and the rebel provincials in a Eght the most favorable
to their own views. Their industry on this occasion had its
effect . . ." 48

During that spring of 1775 the minds of the King's ministers
might well have been haunted by some words uttered in Commons,
four weeks to the day before Lexington, by Edmund Burke, who
loved justice but despised radicalism. In his last and most magnifi-
cent plea for conciliation between England and her colonies, he
said:

"Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No
contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening
government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and
the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single
point is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged
ministers of vengeance, who carry their bolts in their pounces to
the remotest verge of the sea; but there a power steps in that limits
the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says,
'So far shalt thou go, and no farther.' " 47

241

8
BIR TH OF AN ARMT

ff'i

e l am imbarked on a wide ocean, boundless
in its prospect and from whence, perhaps, no safe
harbour is to be found."

GEORGE WASHINGTON 1

The battle of Concord and Lexington was still a provincial
affair a matter between the people of the Massachusetts Bay
province and the occupation troops of General Gage in Boston.
There was no united authority on behalf of all the American
colonies behind the variously assembling and departing companies
of militia arriving at Cambridge to besiege Boston. The generals
there were all creations of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress;
if the men were to be housed, fed and supplied, they could turn only
to the Massachusetts leaders; the entire diplomatic and military
correspondence both with Gage in Boston and the ministry in
London represented only the province of Massachusetts. It was
the purpose of the Massachusetts delegation to the Second Con-
tinental Congress to change all this to get the united Congress
to adopt the provincial army, to stop any conciliation efforts
by the other colonies, to make the cause of Massachusetts the
cause of all the colonies, and to make this clear to the whole
civilized world.

247

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

This was an ambitious set of objectives, and without Lexington
it would have been utterly impossible. In the martyrs of Lexington,
however, the Massachusetts delegation had a force behind them
stronger than oratory or prophecies, and one that so stirred the
people of the other colonies that their delegates would have no
alternative to supporting Massachusetts. But it would not come
without further internal struggle within the Congress. "America
is a great unwieldy body/ 5 John Adams said. "Its progress must
be slow. It is like a large fleet sailing under convoy. The fleetest
sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a coach and six,
the swiftest horses must be slackened, and the slowest quickened,
that all may keep an even pace." 2

The Second Continental Congress was to meet in Philadelphia
on May tenth. John Adams, before leaving for the sessions, went
to Cambridge to visit the New England militia. "There was great
confusion and much distress," he wrote in his diary. "Artillery,
arms, clothing were wanting, and a sufficient supply of provisions
not easily obtained. Neither the officers nor men, however, wanted
spirits or resolution." 3 From Cambridge, Adams followed the
route of the British expedition to Lexington, stopping to talk to the
inhabitants along the way about the details of the action of April
nineteenth. "These were not calculated to diminish my ardor in
the cause; they, on the contrary, convinced me that the die was
cast, the Rubicon passed. . . ." 4 The next day, beset with a fever,
he set out for Philadelphia, somewhat disgusted with himself be-
cause he had to ride in a sulky, attended by a servant, instead
of riding the three hundred miles on horseback as he had intended.

Two of the remaining four Massachusetts delegates had already
left for Philadelphia: Thomas Gushing, of Boston, and Robert
Treat Paine, of Taunton. The other two, Samuel Adams and
John Hancock, were still traveling around central Massachusetts
in tandem. They had spent the night of April twentieth, the day
after the battle, in the Wyman house at Billerica, and went back
to Woburn the next day to get Dorothy Quincy and Aunt Lydia

248

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

Hancock, who had been left there overnight. Their movements for
the next three days are lost to history. Apparently, they dodged
around Middlesex and Worcester counties and finally turned up
in the town of Worcester on Monday, April twenty-fourth.

Hancock was infuriated because there was no committee to
welcome them there, no escort to accompany them on the first
stage of their journey, and no sign of the other three delegates to
the Continental Congress. He accordingly sat down and wrote a
blistering letter "to the Gentlemen Committee of Safety" meeting
with the Provincial Congress at Watertown and occupied with
far more urgent problems than Hancock's pride. "Where is Mr.
Gushing? Are Mr. Paine and Mr. John Adams to be with us? What
are we to depend upon? We travel rather as deserters, which I will
not submit to. . . ," 5 For three days they waited in Worcester
for an escort for Hancock, while Adams pondered his beloved
projects of moving the Continental Congress down the road toward
independence and getting the other colonies to join the rebellion.
Meanwhile, Dorothy Quincy and Aunt Lydia turned up again,
much to Samuel Adams' distress, and all four left for New York
and Philadelphia, by way of Hartford, on April twenty-seventh,
a week and a day after the battle of Lexington.

At Hartford, Hancock and Adams stopped to confer with
Governor Trumbull of Connecticut. Samuel Adams was convinced
that the first strategy of the British would be to split the colonies by
sending an army down through Lake Champlain, Lake George,
and the Hudson River to New York City, isolating New England
from the West and the South. Accordingly, long before Lexington
he had dispatched a member of the Provincial Congress, John
Brown, a Pittsfield lawyer, to Canada to get information on
Canadian public opinion and the state of the old forts garrisoned
since the end of the French War. Three weeks before Lexington,
Brown reported that, in his judgment, the fort at Ticonderoga
"must be seized as soon as possible, should hostilities be committed
by the king's troops." 6 (On the day of Lexington, Gage wrote to

249

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Guy Carleton, the British commander in Canada, directing him
to dispatch the Seventh Regiment to protect Ticonderoga; this
letter, of course, reached Carleton too late. ) Adams now consulted
with Trumbull, for the Massachusetts Committee of Safety had
appointed Benedict Arnold of Connecticut to go and seize Fort
Ticonderoga a chore which Adams' agent. Brown, had already
entrusted to a local group from the New Hampshire Grants who
called themselves the Green Mountain Boys. This semi-outlaw
band had been organized under Ethan Allen to harass the New
York colony in its controversy with New Hampshire over the
territory that is now Vermont. The Hartford Committee of Safety
had added to the confusion by commissioning the taking of Ti-
conderoga to yet a third man, Colonel Samuel Parsons. There was
nothing at this late date that Trumbull, Adams, and Hancock
could do to straighten out all this complexity, but they talked
eagerly of the forty-three cannon, fourteen mortars, and two
howitzers at Ticonderoga and how precious their capture would
be to the patriot cause.

Even as they talked, Arnold was on his way to Vermont with his
commission as colonel and his authorization to enlist four hundred
men for his expedition. Without stopping to enlist, he went with a
servant directly to Castleton, where Ethan Allen and his Green
Mountain Boys were gathered. There followed a dispute between
Arnold and Allen on the command of the expedition, Arnold
having his papers and Allen having the men. They settled the
dispute by agreeing to storm Ticonderoga side by side at the head
of their columns. This they did, with two boatloads of eighty-three
men altogether, on May ninth. The British had let the fort fall
apart after the French War, with great breaches in its walls; and
it was garrisoned by only forty-two men, twenty of whom were
unfit for unlimited duty. When Allen and Arnold arrived, carefully
in step side by side, they were all asleep except the sentry, who
simply ran away. Arnold tried to act with military dignity once
inside the fort, but Allen was having none of that; he brandished

250

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Newspaper broadsides, such as this from the Salem Gazette,
dramatized the Lexington battle and were effectively distrib-
uted as propaganda both in the colonies and in Great Britain,

ESSEX INSTITUTE, SALEM, MASS.

John Adams- (1735-1826), a thirty-nine-year-old Braintree
lawyer when the Revolution broke out, was the leading force in
the Second Continental Congress and brought about the ap-
pointment of Washington as commander in chief. MUSEUM OF

FINE ARTS, BOSTON

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BIRTH OF AN ARMY

his sword over his head and kept shouting at the door of the
commanding officer's quarters: "Come out, you old rat" 7 Thus,
on the day before the Second Continental Congress met, the first
offensive American action succeeded at a remote spot in the
wilderness on Lake George.

Meanwhile, after leaving Hartford, the Hancock party pro-
ceeded to Fairfield, where Dorothy Quincy and Aunt Lydia were
installed in the mansion of Hancock's friend, Thaddeus Burr,
high sheriff of Fairfield County. Hancock and Adams continued on
to New York, where they met their fellow delegates, John Adams,
Gushing, and Paine, at King's Bridge, just north of the city. Han-
cock's spirits soared at their triumphant entry into New York.

It was midafternoon of Saturday, May sixth. Hancock and
Adams the former slender and elegant and somewhat delicate
for his thirty-eight years and the latter shaking with his palsy and
seedy and old beyond his fifty-two years rode ahead in Hancock's
fine phaeton. Behind them was John Adams, the intellectual
young lawyer, thirty-nine and serious, sober, and responsible,
sharing his chaise with his fellow delegate, the Boston merchant,
Thomas Gushing, a mild man who still hoped that strong economic
action by the colonies could prevent severance from England. The
fifth Massachusetts delegate, Robert Treat Paine, the small-town
lawyer from Taunton, who had appeared for the prosecution
against John Adams at the trial of the Boston Massacre soldiers,
rode alone behind. Word of Lexington had, of course, preceded the
delegates to New York, and the latter colony, which previously
had not even chosen delegates to the Continental Congress, was
ready with a spectacular reception for the heroic delegation from
Massachusetts.

As soon as word of the approach of the delegates reached New
York, thousands of people rode out of the town in their carriages
and on horseback to meet them. Three miles from the town bound-
ary a battalion of eight hundred uniformed militia arrived to es-
cort them with bayonets fixed and a great band of musicians

251

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

blaring forth. Thousands of spectators tramped through the dirt
roads to see the great men, and hundreds of church bells in New
York rang joyously. "You can easier fancy than I describe the
amazing concourse of people," a Connecticut delegate wrote to
his wife: "I believe well nigh every open carriage in the city, and
thousands on foot trudging and sweating through the dirt. At the
Fresh Water, the battalion halted, and we again passed their front
and received a second salute from the left, and were received by
our friends, the delegates of the city. 3 ' 8

As the procession reached the city proper, the crowds mounted
in size and noisy enthusiasm. "The doors, the windows, the stoops,
the roofs of the piazzas, were loaded with all ranks, ages and sexes;
in short, I feared every moment lest someone would be crushed to
death; but no accident. A little dispute arose as we came near
the town the populace insisting on taking out our horses and
drawing the carriages by hand." 9

In his diary John Adams, deeply concerned with the problems
that faced Massachusetts in the new session of the Continental
Congress, dismissed this turbulent reception in a sentence: "At
Kings Bridge we were met by a great number of gentlemen in
carriages and on horseback, and all the way their numbers in-
creased, till I thought the whole city was come out to meet us." 10
And that was all on the subject from John Adams, Hancock, how-
ever, was beside himself with vanity and excitement, and wrote an
astonishing letter to Dorothy Quincy in Fairfield, in which he took
the view that the reception was meant solely for him and that it
was only his carriage that the populace sought to pull by hand. He
even ignored the fact that the father of the Revolution, Samuel
Adams, sat dourly beside him in the phaeton. "I dined and then
set out in the procession for New York," Hancock wrote. "The
carriage of your humble servant of course being first in the pro-
cession. When we arrived within three miles of the City, we were
met by the grenadier company and regiment of the city militia
under arms, gentlemen in carriages and on horseback and many

252

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

thousands of persons on foot, the roads filled with people, and the
greatest cloud of dust I ever saw. In this situation, we entered the
city, and passing through the principal streets of New York amidst
the acclamations of thousands were set down at Mr. Fraunces's.
After entering the house, three huzzas were given, and the people
by degrees dispersed.

"When I got within a mile of the city my carriage was stopped,
and persons appearing with proper harnesses insisted upon taking
out my horses and dragging me into and through the city, a
circumstance I would not have had taken place upon any con-
sideration, not being fond of such parade.

"I begged and entreated that they would suspend the design
and asked it as a favor, and the matter subsided, but when I got to
the entrance of the city and the numbers of spectators increased to
perhaps seven thousand or more, they declared they would have
the horses out and drag me through the city. I repeated my
request, and I was obliged to apply to the leading gentleman in the
procession to intercede with them not to carry their designs into
execution, as it was very disagreeable to me. They were at last
prevailed upon, and I proceeded. I was much obliged to them for
their good wishes and opinion, in short no person could possibly
be more noticed than myself." 11

In the self-adulating letter, which continues for six more para-
graphs, there is not a word of the significance of the reception : the
effect of the news of Lexington on the colony most loyal to the
Grown and its wholly new embracement of the patriot cause. It
is impossible to escape the impression that not Hancock but his
austere carriage mate, Samuel Adams, prevented the hauling of
the carriage by the citizens of New York. "If you wish to be
gratified with so humiliating a spectacle, I will get out and walk,
for I will not countenance an act by which my fellow citizens will
degrade themselves into beasts," 12 was Samuel Adams' known
comment to a companion under similar circumstances later that
year.

253

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Samuel Adams had Ms own brooding thoughts to occupy him.
He was beginning to see the limits of his own genius. As an agitator,
as a mob manipulator, as a town politician, he was extraordinarily
competent. As a statesman, he had infinitely less confidence in
himself. And the management of the program for the Continental
Congress would call for statesmanship, and Samuel Adams knew
it. For the suspicions, fears, and downright dislike of Massachusetts
ran deep in the other colonies, and Samuel Adams knew that it
would take more than a Lexington wholly to dissipate them. A
pessimism seemed to settle over him as he neared Philadelphia a
pessimism undoubtedly springing from both his reservations about
coping with fifty men from all the colonies with little in common
and the historic tendencies of the other colonies to look with mis-
givings upon Massachusetts. Samuel Adams was much too stern
a Puritan to recognize either the necessary role of compromise in
democratic action or the possibility that Massachusetts might not
always be right.

The narrowness of Puritan doctrine was offensive to both the
Middle Atlantic and the Southern states, and the equalitarian
practices of the New England militia were also repugnant to the
aristocrats of the South, who loved their romantic illusions about
an officer-gentleman class. General Ward and General Putnam
were a storekeeper and a working farmer, respectively, and the
colonial officers of the South liked to think themselves above such
pursuits. There were also very serious doubts in the other colonies
about independence a doctrine that both the Adamses were
beginning to preach openly. Traditional ties of Virginia, for ex-
ample, with England were strongly emotional the Church of
England, the efforts to create a landed aristocracy, the attachment
to ceremony and formality. In New York the Church of England
was immensely strong, particularly in New York City, where it

254

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

was the established church. In Pennsylvania the Quakers had
grave religious misgivings about Massachusetts' militancy. Many
of the colonies were unsympathetic with the trade problems of
Massachusetts, some of them being themselves primarily agrarian
societies. Almost all of them feared as they had in the First
Continental Congress of the previous autumn a new and strug-
gling nation run by the zealots of Boston, whose moral principles
they believed to be tempered with shrewd concern for their own
economic interests. Finally, more than one serious observer was
certain that if it were not for the union imposed by the British
crown, the colonies would be involved in a whole series of intra-
colonial disputes and wars.

To one so consistently and so early dedicated to independence as
Samuel Adams, all these factors conditioning the opening of the
new session of the Continental Congress were dispiriting. Adams,
moreover, was tired and depressed. He had not been home since
the opening of the Provincial Congress in Concord two months
earlier. In his hasty and circuitous departure from Clarke's house
in Lexington, he had been unable to return to Boston to get the
suit that his friends had bought for him to wear at such important
occasions as the Continental Congress meetings. He spent his
first days in Philadelphia struggling with the problem of whether
he could properly buy himself a new suit with public moneys ad-
vanced to him for expenses, for he had no funds of his own; he
decided finally to get the suit. Then word came to him of the death,
of consumption on board ship from England, of Josiah Quincy,
Junior, at the age of thirty-one. Quincy, a brilliant lawyer, was one
of the great theoreticians of the American case against England
and had been in London as an American agent. To Samuel Adams
he had been like a son, and his admiration for Adams was un-
limited. His death added to the heaviness with which Samuel
Adams faced the tasks that lay before the Massachusetts delegation
at Philadelphia.

His cousin, John Adams, felt no such melancholy. Thirteen

255

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

years younger than Samuel, far more intellectual and far less
emotional, John Adams had not just the competences of the
statesman but also the statesman's values and insights. Moreover,
John Adams believed thoroughly in the strength of law rather than
that of great men as the foundation of the really good society.
Where Samuel Adams was a great Puritan, John was a great
moralist. While Samuel had to manipulate events to bring about
an end he sought, John Adams could conceive of no path to an end
he sought except through reason. With Samuel Adams, the Rev-
olution was almost a religious matter; with John, it belonged, as
one more episode, to the long struggle of man to improve himself
through the use of reason and the establishment of rational insti-
tutions. And John Adams came to Philadelphia with as much zest
for the intellectual exercise in the sessions of Congress as his older
cousin did with reluctance.

John Adams wrote in his diary an entire program for the Second
Continental Congress: "I thought the first step ought to be to
recommend to the people ... to seize on all the Crown officers,
and hold them with civility, humanity, and generosity, as hostages
for the security of the people of Boston and to be exchanged for
them as soon as the British army would release them [this was un-
necessary, because then unknown to Adams Gage permitted
inhabitants who wished to do so to leave Boston] ; that we ought to
recommend to people of all the States to institute governments
for themselves, under their own authority, and that without loss
of time; that we ought to declare the Colonies free, sovereign and
independent states, and then to inform Great Britain we were
willing to enter into negotiations with them for the redress of all
grievances, and a restoration of harmony between the two coun-
tries, upon permanent principles. All this I thought might be done
before we entered into any connections, alliances or negotiations
with foreign powers. I was also for informing Great Britain very
frankly that hitherto we were free; but, if the war should be con-
tinued, we were determined to seek alliances with France, Spain

256

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

and any other power of Europe that would contract with us.
That we ought immediately to adopt the army in Cambridge as a
continental army, to appoint a General and all other officers, take
upon ourselves the pay, subsistence, clothing, armor and munitions
of the troops." 1 *

On Wednesday, May tenth, the forty-eight delegates present
convened in Pennsylvania's State House on Chestnut Street in
Philadelphia. If the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts was an
illegal body, the Continental Congress was a step further from
legality. As an institution it was nothing more than an assemblage
of four dozen men from the various colonies, met together to discuss
the difficulties that they were variously facing with England. The
delegates had no uniform authority whatever, some being author-
ized by their colonial legislatures merely to attend the Congress.
Only two colonies, Maryland and North Carolina, were com-
mitted to supporting whatever acts the Congress might pass. Yet
resistance to the British rule was in the air, and there is no doubt
that the differences that occurred were due to varying judgment
on the pacing and degree of the resistance.

The first three days were spent in reading the Lexington deposi-
tions, fixing the blame for the first bloodshed upon the British and
so memorializing the ministry in London. An official request from
the Provincial Congress in Massachusetts that the Continental
Congress take over the army "by appointing a generalissimo," 14
was read, but then the news of Ticonderoga arrived. Attention
was diverted to the problem of what to do with the captured fort
and with nearby Crown Point, also captured. Samuel Adams
wanted to use them as a point of departure for a march on Canada
and was voted down in a resolution that provided merely for the
occupation of the captured forts. The Congress then considered
two requests for advice from New York on what course it should
take if, as was expected, British troops were landed. The answer:
a peaceable landing was aH right, but force should be met with
force.

257

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

The hot Philadelphia May droned on, and as Samuel Adams
seemed to withdraw more and more into himself, John Adams
began to fume at the reluctance of the Congress to take any bold
or even significant action. He blew up in anger when the conserv-
ative faction, led by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, introduced
a resolution petitioning the King for negotiations leading to recon-
ciliation. John Adams gave a long speech in opposition, after which
Dickinson followed him into the courtyard and told him that if
the New Englanders "don't concur with us in our pacific system,
I and a number of us will break off from you in New England, and
we will carry on the opposition ourselves in our own way." 15
Furious as he was at this threat, Adams was determined not to
walk into any trap that would divide the Congress before it had
achieved what he had thought to be its proper objectives. He
voted for the resolution and bided his time.

Most of the debating soared far over the head of John Hancock,
who was having his troubles, even at a distance, with his fiancee,
Dorothy Quincy. She refused to answer any of his letters and even
to acknowledge pretty gifts he kept sending her by messenger to
Fairfield. He was, moreover, getting word that Dorothy's host's
nephew, Aaron Burr, was in Fairfield and paying too much atten-
tion to her and that she was gleefully accepting it. Hancock's
papers, during these epochal birth pains of the American nation
that he witnessed, consist of scolding letters to Dorothy Quincy.
Meanwhile, his great vanity was indulged by his election as presi-
dent of the Congress. Actually, the presidency had no more
authority than a clerkship, and Peyton Randolph of Virginia had
resigned it because he felt that the speakership of. the Virginia
Assembly was more important. There is no record that, as presi-
dent, Hancock showed either organizational or intellectual lead-
ership. He simply presided as a chairman and functioned largely
as a correspondence clerk. If history were beckoning John Han-
cock, it would have to be more obvious. He made nothing of the
opportunity for leadership that, however vague its capacity, the

258

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

post represented. Instead, he waited for a place of greater glory
commensurate with what he thought to be his ability.

Probably the most tenacious political entity of the time was the
Provincial Congress sitting under Dr. Warren at Watertown,
Massachusetts. Its communication to the Continental Congress
having gone unanswered, it sent another on May sixteenth and had
it delivered personally by one of its own members, Dr. Benjamin
Church, who wrote a very polite note to Gage, saying that he would
not be able to do any spying for a while because of the journey to
Philadelphia. It was Thursday, June first the Continental Con-
gress had been in session for three weeks when Dr. Church
arrived in Philadelphia. He delivered the Provincial Congress
letter to the State House, stayed around for a week, possibly to
gather what information he could get to sell to Gage, prescribed a
lotion for John Adams* eyes, which had been smarting badly ever
since his long, feverish ride from Massachusetts, and then returned
home, carrying with him letters from the delegates to their families
and friends.

The effects of the carefully prepared document from Massa-
chusetts, bearing the stamp of Dr. Joseph Warren in its style, was
to force the Continental Congress to action. It shrewdly associated
the problems of local self-government for the colonies thereby
declaring a de facto interruption if not an end to British rule and
of the creation of a continental army. Formally it petitioned the
Continental Congress for advice in setting up a civil government
to replace that of the Crown. The petition was in itself less im-
portant than its implication, for the Provincial Congress had for
six months been functioning as the only civil government
of Massachusetts in any case. But the implication that Massa-
chusetts could not and would not set up a permanent civil govern-
ment without the consent of the Continental Congress forced upon

259

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

the latter body the role of central authority over all the colonies.
Similarly, the petition gave a civil authority power over the
military by urging and pleading that the Continental Congress
take over the army assembling at Cambridge. The formal acts that
Massachusetts would require of the Congress were, of course, ad-
vice to go ahead and set up a civil government and the appoint-
ment of a continental commander in chief of the army. All this
obviously was forcing the hand of a body which had no power to
set up governments and wage wars unless it assumed such powers.
Its only present purpose was as a forum for its members to advise
and consult with one another as representatives of wholly separate
chartered colonies. Massachusetts would have the Continental
Congress become a governing legislature.

John Adams thought that the Continental Congress avoided
facing this essential metamorphosis by occupying itself with more
conciliatory proposals. "This measure of imbecility, the second
petition to the King," he grumbled in his diary, "embarrassed
every exertion of Congress; it occasioned motions and debates
without end for appointing committees to draw up a declara-
tion of the causes, motives, and objects of taking arms with a view
to obtain decisive declarations against independence, etc. In the
mean time the New England army investing Boston, the New
England legislatures, congresses and conventions, and the whole
body of the people were left without munitions of war, without
arms, clothing, pay, or even countenance and encouragement.
Every post brought me letters from my friends , . . urging in
pathetic terms the impossibility of keeping their men together
without the assistance of Congress." 10

Many delegates, however, hoped for some peaceable word from
England, and the petition from Massachusetts was handled slowly.
Hancock read it to the Congress on Friday, June second. John
Adams immediately rose to entreat the delegates to give an early
and affirmative reply. He saw the first part of the petition, "re-

260

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

questing the Congress to favor them with explicit advice respecting
the taking up and exercising the powers of civil government/' 17
as an occasion for the Continental Congress to urge all the colonies
to institute new governments. In his diary he observed that he
supposed America should probably follow the example of the
Greeks and form a confederacy of states. He believed "that the
case of Massachusetts was the most urgent, but that it could not be
long before every other colony must follow her example. That with
a view to this subject, I had looked into the ancient and modern
confederacies for example, but they all appeared to me to have been
huddled up in a hurry by a few chiefs. But we had a people of more
intelligence, curiosity and enterprise, who must be all consulted,
and we must realize the theories of the wisest writers, and invite
the people to erect the whole building with their own hands,
upon the broadest foundation. That this could be done only by
conventions of representatives chosen by the people in the several
colonies, in the most exact proportions. That it was my opinion
that Congress ought now to recommend to the people of every
colony to call such conventions immediately, and set up govern-
ments of their own, under their own authority; for the people were
the source of all authority and original of all power. These were
new, strange and terrible doctrines to the greatest part of the
members. . . , 5518

Adams, in this wise and ultimately heeded speech, seemed, as
he noted, to be some light years ahead of most of his brothers of
the Congress, who still saw the problem as solely one of finding an
harmonious way of living under the British. They were still on the
whole, more fearful of independence and instability than of oc-
casional British arrogance and enforced stability. So as though
its pestiferous pleas might vanish in the night they lay the Massa-
chusetts petition on the table. The next morning, of course, they
had to face it all over again. This they did by appointing a com-
mittee of five not one of them from New England to consider
the petition. John Adams continued to fume at the inaction. In

261

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

Watertown, Dr. Joseph Warren, still presiding over daily sessions
of a Provincial Congress trying to hold together an army of
several thousands that was no longer just a Massachusetts army,
brought up the bugaboo of military rule : "The matter of taking
up government, I think, cannot occasion much debate. If the
southern colonies have any apprehensions from the northern colo-
nies, they surely must now be for an establishment of civil govern-
ment here; for, as an army is now necessary or is tailing the field,
it is obvious to everyone, if they are without control, a military
government must certainly take place. . . ." 19

Oddly enough, it was Samuel Adams who was most relaxed over
the slowness with which the Massachusetts petition was dealt:
"The spirit of patriotism prevails among the members of this
Congress, but from the necessity of things business must go slower
than one could wish. It is difficult to possess upwards of sixty
gentlemen at once with the same feelings upon questions of im-
portance that are continually arising." 20

Finally, on June seventh, the Congress responded to the civil
government part of the Massachusetts petition. It not only did not
go as far as John Adams would wish but it avoided accommodating
Massachusetts with any advice or consent to the establishment
of a "permanent" government. Nevertheless, it recognized the
right of a people to set up their own government and to ignore a
tyrannical government. In the specific case of Massachusetts, it
ruled "that no obedience being due to the Act of Parliament for
altering the charter of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, nor to a
Governor or Lieutenant-Governor who will not observe the direc-
tions of, but endeavor to subvert, that charter. The Governor and
Lieutenant-Govemor of that colony are to be considered as absent,
and their offices vacant; and as there is no Council there, and the
inconveniences arising from the suspension of the powers of gov-
ernment are intolerable, especially at a time when General Gage
hath actually levied war and is carrying on hostilities against his
Majesty's peaceable and loyal subjects of that Colony; that, in

262

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

order to conform as near as may be to the spirit and substance of
the charter, it be recommended to the Provincial Convention to
write letters to the inhabitants of the several places, which are en-
titled to representation in Assembly, requesting them to choose
such representatives, and that the Assembly when chosen do elect
Counsellors ; and that such assembly or Council exercise the powers
of government, until a Governor of His Majesty's appointment
will consent to govern the Colony according to its charter." 21

Although it both expressed loyalty to the King and went no
further in the assertion of rights than those granted in the old
charters, this resolution represented a tremendous commitment
to the Congress. Not only did it advise a colony to institute its
own government, albeit temporary, but it, ipso facto, set itself
up as a central authority within the colonies. The resolution went
off to Massachusetts. The Congress in Philadelphia now faced the
thorny question of adopting the New England army. In doing so,
it would be committing all the colonies to a war with Britain that
before Lexington was utterly inconceivable to any delegate there
with the possible exception of the radical and rhetorical Patrick
Henry, Samuel Adams' Virginia counterpart, who could hardly
wait for hostilities to resume.

IV

The key to the adoption of the New England army at Cambridge
by the Continental Congress was the appointment of a commander
in chief. Yet John Adams was the only delegate ready to press the
matter. Samuel Adams, who distrusted generals, was in favor of
soldiers' electing their own officers and was not anxious to see any
general appointed. Whenever his cousin tried to consult with him
on the subject, he withdrew into silence and said nothing.

Nor were John Adams' other colleagues from Massachusetts
much help to him, "Mr. Hancock himself had an ambition to be
appointed commander in chief. Whether he thought an election

263

WILLIAM DIAMOND'S DRUM

a compliment due to him,, and intended to have the honor of
declining it, or whether he would have accepted, I know not." 22
Gushing wanted a New Englander, because the army was from
New England. Paine insisted that the post should go to his old
college mate, Artemas Ward. But John Adams had made up his
mind that it had to be a Southerner. Fear of New England he
recognized as far too powerful to permit a New England com-
mander in chief. His alert eye fixed upon the only man attending
the Congress in uniform, Colonel George Washington of Virginia.
Adams was impressed by Washington's quiet patriotism (Wash-
ington's resolution to raise and personally pay for a force of a
thousand men and march at their head to the relief of Boston had
become widely known), by his sense of economy in speaking, and
by the extraordinary strength of his character. By the middle
of June he was determined to start the machinery to elect Wash-
ington as commander in chief.

John Adams began his tactics with some electioneering outside
the State House. With Gushing and Paine he got nowhere, and he
would not, of course, even mention Washington's name to Han-
cock. Even more surprising were objections from other colonies to
Washington's lack of proved ability. Whenever Adams brought
up the Virginia colonel's record in the French war, he was re-
minded that every major engagement that Washington partici-
pated in was lost. Adams, however, remained convinced that
Washington was the only man for the job. Not even the views of
some of Washington's fellow delegates from Virginia could change
his mind. "In canvassing this subject, out of doors, I found too that
even among the delegates of Virginia there were difficulties. The
apostolical reasonings among themselves, which should be greatest,
were not less energetic among the saints of the ancient dominion
than they were among us of New England. In several conversations,
I found more than one very cool about the appointment of Wash-
ington, and particularly Mr. Pendleton was very dear and full
against it" 28 As president of the Virginia Committee of Safety,

264

LEXINGTON

(Tfae ntmtfwiq troops of Smith wen rescued at
LvciygtmtyfiMQetiie wwwmded> toy Xoyrf ?ero?,
who set up fiMjrieces to tep militia fit JJPUJ while
ritisk n~fiwwed -for ikeir ntrnnt to Kostm.

4000

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

Edmund Pendleton had a particularly strong influence. But
Adams, contemplating the need and dangers of the weak, quarrel-
some cluster of colonies and the shaggy, unorganized axmy that he
had seen at Cambridge, saw Washington's gifts of character and
his respect-commanding bearing as necessary to the building of any
effective army and to any enlistments or support outside of New
England.

On Wednesday, June fourteenth eight weeks, to the day, after
Lexington John Adams determined that he would that day
nominate George Washington as commander in chief of an Amer-
ican army. That morning he took only his cousin, Samuel Adams,
into his confidence. John Adams was still troubled by the looseness
of the organization of the New England army (of the twenty
thousand who besieged Boston right after Lexington, four thou-
sand had gone home), by the irresolute attitude of some of the
other colonies, by the doubts expressed during his canvassing of his
colleagues on Washington. "Full of anxieties concerning these
confusions," he wrote in his diary, "and apprehending daily that
we should hear very distressing news from Boston, I walked with
Mr. Samuel Adams in the State House yard, for a little exercise and
fresh air, before the hour of Congress, and there represented to
him the various dangers that surrounded us. He agreed to them
all, but said, c What shall we do? 3 1 answered him, that he knew I
had taken great pains to get our colleagues to agree upon some
plan, that we might be unanimous; but he knew that they would
pledge themselves to nothing; but I was determined to take a step
which should compel them and all the other members of Congress
to declare themselves for or against something. e l am determined
this morning to make a direct motion that Congress should adopt
the army before Boston, and appoint Colonel Washington com-
mander of it.' Mr. Adams seemed to think very seriously of it,
but said nothing." 24

John Adams entered the State House and, as soon as the session
was convened, arose to make his speech. He had no idea of how

265

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

much support he would get from his cousin, but he knew from
whom he would get opposition. He pressed the need for the im-
mediate adoption of the army at Cambridge and appointing a
commanding general. He then proceeded to describe the ideal man,
"who was among us and very well known to all of us, a gentleman
whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent
fortune, great talents and excellent universal character would
command the approbation of all America and unite the cordial
exertions of all the colonies better than any other person. . . ," 25

At this great speech of John Adams, Hancock, sitting in the
president's chair, beamed on the assembled delegates as he im-
agined his colleague to be leading up to his, Hancock's, nomi-
nation as commander in chief. But when Adams came to Wash-
ington's name, and as the Virginian left the room to permit the
nomination to be debated, Hancock's face fell noticeably. "I never
remarked a more sudden and striking change of countenance,"
Adams said. "Mortification and resentment were expressed as
forcibly as his face could exhibit them. Mr. Samuel Adams sec-
onded the motion, and that did not soften the President's physiog-
nomy at all." 26

John Adams was both surprised and gratified that his nomina-
tion of Washington was seconded by Samuel Adams, who "very
rarely spoke much in Congress," 27 though Hancock felt more
bitterly about the seconding speech than he did about the nomi-
nation. But as soon as Samuel Adams was finished, several dele-
gates leaped to their feet to oppose the nomination. Edmund
Pendleton of Virginia and Roger Sherman took the lead in an
argument based on the fact that the army was from New England
and already had a general with whom they were apparently
satisfied in Artemas Ward and who was able to keep the British
bottled up in Boston which was all that anybody wanted them
to do at the time. Both the remaining Massachusetts delegates,
Gushing and Paine, failed to support the nomination. Gushing
was afraid that a Virginia commander would lead to dissent in the

266

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

ranks, particularly since New England militia were not accus-
tomed to taldng orders from their officers even when they chose
their own. Paine said that Artemas Ward was at Harvard with
him and was a great and competent man. The session ended with
no action being taken at all.

John Adams refused to give up. He spent the evening con-
ducting a campaign among the delegates. He was relatively cer-
tain that most of the delegates who had made no comment during
the debate were for Washington. Consequently, he spent his time
with those who opposed the nomination, finally persuading them
to withdraw their opposition. He talked with his own delegates
from Massachusetts and made them see that their attitude risked
all that they had come to Philadelphia to achieve. By the time
Adams retired that night, he was no longer doubtful about the
outcome. The next morning Thomas Johnson of Maryland for-
mally nominated Washington again. He was unanimously elected.
The army had a general. And the Continental Congress had an
army.

Eight weeks had passed since William Diamond beat his drum
on the Common at Lexington and some forty men lined up to
face the British regulars. Now, as the hot Philadelphia summer
wore on, it began to dawn upon the delegates to the Congress that
they were no longer concerned with launching a revolution but
merely with the conduct of a war to seal it, "for the revolution was
complete in the minds of the people and the union of the colonies,
before the war commenced in the skirmishes of Concord and Lex-
ington on the igth of April, I775." 28

Back in Lexington the townspeople followed through, without
reservations, without holding back, on what they had started on
that April dawn. Captain Parker mustered forty-five men of his
company on May sixth and again marched them to Cambridge to
help sustain the siege of Boston. In June he marched sixty-four of

267

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

them to aid in the battle of Bunker's Hill. Three months later, how-
ever, Captain Parker was dead at forty-six, having been in an ad-
vanced state of tuberculosis all through his fighting days that
eventful spring.

After the provincial militia was incorporated into the Con-
tinental Army, a hundred and six men of Lexington, out of a
total population of seven hundred and fifty, enlisted. From the
farms of Lexington they followed the British, for six years, all the
way down the coast to Yorktown. Men whose families for four
and five generations had not been twelve miles from the Common
turned up on the battlefields and camp grounds of New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Some of them, like
Edmund Munroe, the veteran of Rogers' Rangers, were killed in
those distant places. All the male members of the family of Samuel
Hadley, who was killed on the Common his father and three
brothers followed the British to New York and on to Virginia.
Prince Estabrook, the slave, fought throughout the war and came
back to his freedom.

William Diamond, the drummer, also went away to the war,
grew up in the army, and returned to Lexington. There he married
Rebecca Simonds, who had been only eleven when her father
marched off with Captain Parker to Cambridge. They had six
children and in later years moved to New Hampshire, where
William Diamond died during the presidency of John Adams'
son. The young fifer, Jonathan Harrington, also returned to Lex-
ington, married, and surviving five of his seven children died at
ninety-six in 1854, the year that Lincoln and Douglas debated the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill. But the family of the other Jonathan
Harrington, the young father who had crawled across the Common
to die on his own doorstep, disappeared from Lexington. His son
died the year after the battle just before his tenth birthday, and his
young widow went to Boston to start a new life.

Young Dr. Prescott, of Concord, and Lydia MullSken, whom
he was courting in Lexington the night that he joined Revere

268

BIRTH OF AN ARMY

in rousing the minutemen of Lincoln and Concord, were never
married. The Mulliken house, standing in the staging area for
Percy's retreat, had been burned to the ground; and Lydia, her
mother, and four younger children all moved into the house of a
neighbor. Prescott became a surgeon with the Continental Army,
was captured, and died in a British prison at Halifax in 1777.
Lydia's two older brothers enlisted in the Continental Army; one
of them, the minuteman, Nathaniel, was dead within ten months.
Lydia waited until eight years had dimmed the memory of the
young doctor, and then she married and moved away. And so
the war did not deal easily with the people of Lexington, but they
responded with gallantry and dignity and acceptance.

The other hero-physician of the day, Dr. Joseph Warren, who
had taken such brilliant command of the province's affairs after
the battle, was made a major general by the Continental Con-
gress. He fought as a volunteer at the battle of Bunker's Hill,
however, refusing a command because his commission had not yet
arrived. He was killed, as he had wished, in active combat, as the
British stormed a redoubt whose defenders had run out of am-
munition. A few yards away the Royal Marine Major Pitcairn,
who had commanded on Lexington Common, fell mortally
wounded and died in the arms of his soldier son.

In Lexington the Reverend Jonas Clarke remained a great
and dominant influence. On behalf of the town he wrote a thun-
dering disapproval of Jay's Treaty, terminating the war with
Britain, in 1795. Three years later he wrote a masterpiece of
statesmanship, a persuasive and closely reasoned petition from the
town to Congress against the arming of merchant vessels during
the quasi-war with France. His twelve children scattered all over
the world, some becoming diplomats, some merchant-adventurers,
some politicians and judges. None of his sons entered the ministry,
but all his daughters who married became the wives of clergymen,
including an Anglican who was president of Columbia College
in New York.

269

WILLIAM DIAMOND S DRUM

Half a century after his ministry in Lexington began, Jonas
Clarke died, just a month before his seventy-fifth birthday. His
people carried him from the old house where the Hancocks and
Clarkes had lived for over a hundred years and interred him in
the tomb their grandfathers had built for old "Bishop" Hancock.
So the great day of Lexington slipped into history, having "given us
a name among the nations of the earth." 29

270

NOTES

(NOTE: Unorthodox orthography, capitalization, and punctuation
have been changed in quotations, except when otherwise noted,
to avoid unnecessary distractions. Today such variations as ap-
peared in the originals would misleadingly suggest illiteracy. Actu-
ally, of course, in the eighteenth century uniform spellings and
punctuation were not common even among the educated,}

NOTES TO PROLOGUE

1 Peter Force, American Archives, 4th Series, II, 492-93.
2 Elias Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington, 33,
3 Ezra Ripley, A History of the Fight at Concord, 35.
4 Major General William Heath, Memoirs, 12.
5 Charles Hudson, History of Lexington, II, 527.
6 Force, op. cit., 4, II, 491, Italics added.

273

NOTES

NOTES TO PART i

^Proceedings of the Centennial of the Battle of Lexington, 10*

2 Josiah Quincy, The History of Harvard University, II, 120.

W.F. Gazette, April 18, 1768, reprinted in Boston Gazette.

^Sermon Preached on the Ordination of Mr. John Hancock [Jr.]

5 Diary of Jonas Clarke, October 19, 1766.

6 Edward Holyoke, Obedience and Submission, 7 f.

7 Edward Holyoke, Integrity and Religion, 12 f.

8 Jonathan Mayhew, The Snare Broken, 9.

^Instructions "To William Reed, Esq., the present Representative

of Lexington," October 21,1 765.

10 Cited in Carl Becker, The Eve of the Revolution, 42.

n lnstractions, loc. cit. Cf. John Stuart Mill: "Thus a people may

prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness,

or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the

exertions necessary for preserving it ... they are unlikely long to

enjoy it." (Representative Government)

^Declarations and Resolves, Town of Lexington, September 21,

1768.

18 Report of the Committee of Correspondence adopted by the

Town of Lexington, December 1773.

15 Resolves, Town of Lexington, September 26, 1774.

ie jonas Clarke, The Importance of Military Skill, Measures for

Defense, and a Martial Spirit in a Time of Peace, 1 1 .

1T Carleton A. Staples, Proceedings of the Lexington Historical

Society, IV, 48 ff.

18 Heath Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, I, 19, 6,

274

NOTES

NOTES TO PART 2

! The Writings of Samuel Adams, II, 25.

2 Francis H. Brown, Lexington Historical Society, A Copy of
Epitaphs in the Old Burying-Grounds, 26.
Proceedings of the Lexington Historical Society, II, 158 ff.
4 The Writings of Samuel Adams, II, 115.

5 W. V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams,
I, 196.

6 From the Salem Gazette, cited in Richard Frothingham, Life and
Times of Joseph Warren, 445. It is not in the journals of the Pro-
vincial Congress.

^Intelligence received April isth, 1775" in Gage Papers, Clem-
ents Library, the University of Michigan.

8 Warren- Adams Letters. First Series, Massachusetts Historical
Society Collections, LXXII, 45.

9 "Colonial Correspondence on the Boston Port Bill," Fourth Series,
Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, IV.
10 Paul Revere to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, First Series, Massachusetts
Historical Society, Collections, 1, 105 ff.

NOTES TO PART 3

Deposition of Paul Revere, undated. In Massachusetts Historical
Society.

2 Lieutenant John Barker, King's Own Regiment, "A British Officer
in Boston," in Atlantic Monthly, XXXIX, 389 ff.
8 Gage to the Earl of Dartmouth, March 28, 1775, in The Corre-
spondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State,
1763-1775, 1, 395.

275

NOTES

4 Gage to Dartmouth, October 30, 1774, loc. cit. } I, 389.

Dartmouth to Gage, January 27, 1775, loc. cit., II, 183.

6 Ensign Henry de Berniere, in Second Series, Massachusetts His-

torical Society Collections, IV, 2 14-15.

7 Barker, loc. cit., 398.

8 Bancroft Transcripts, Manuscripts Division, New York Public

Library.

9 Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, Royal Welch Fusiliers, Diary,

I, 18.

10 First Series, Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, IV,

85-

n Henry W. Holland, William Dawes, read before the New Eng-

land Historic Genealogical Society, June 7, 1876, 9.

12 Revere to Belknap, loc. cit.

13 Mehitable May (Dawes) Goddard in Holland, op. cit., 35.

14 Revere to Belknap, loc. cit.

16 In the Devens papers, cited by Richard Frothingham, The Siege
of Boston, 57 n.

17 G. W. Brown, "Sketch of the Life of Solomon Brown," in Pro-
ceedings of the Lexington Historical Society, II, 1 24.
18 Deposition of Elijah Sanderson.

19 Elbridge H. Goss, The Life of Colonel Paul Revere, 1, 199 n.
20 Reverend Jonas Clarke, Opening of the War of the Revolution,
igth of April, 1775. A Brief Narrative of the Principal Trans-
actions of that Day. Appended to a Sermon Preached by Him in
Lexington, April 19, 1776. Lexington Historical Society.
21 Revere to Belknap, loc. cit.
22 Deposition of Paul Revere, loc. cit.

26 Deposition of Elijah Sanderson.

276

NOTES

27 In the Gage Papers, William L. Clements Library, University

of Michigan.

28 Mackenzie, op. cit. I, 18.

29 Cited in Allen French, General Gage's Informers, 39. Ensign

Lister's narrative account was written in 1 782.

*Ibid., 40.

31 Barker, loc. cit., 398.

S2 Lieutenant William Sutherland, in Late News of the Excursion

and Ravages of the King's Troops, 13.

33 S. A. Smith, West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775,

17-

England Historical and Genealogical Register, VIII, 187.

37 Munroe deposition.
38 Sutherland, op. cit., 14.

40 Ibid.

41 Revereto Belknap, loc. cit.

NOTES TO PART 4

1 Resolves of the Town of Lexington, December 1 773.
2 Force, op. cit., 491.

3 "Journals of the Second Provincial Congress., 112.
4 Letter report of Major Pitcairn to General Gage, April 26, 1775,
in Gage Papers at William L. Clements Library.
5 Henry de Berniere, Second Series, Massachusetts Historical So-
ciety Collections, IV, 216.
^Barker, loc. cit., 398.

7 "Circumstantial Account," by General Gage, Second Series, Mas-
sachusetts Historical Society Collections, II, 225.
8 Force, op. cit., 496.

277

NOTES

500-1.
10 Report to Gage, loc. cit.
u Force ? op. cit., 491,, emphasis added,
12 Sutherland, op. tit., 17.
18 De Berniere, loc. cit., 216.

14 Jonas Clarke, Appendix to "The Fate of Blood-thirsty Oppres-
sors."

15 Report to Gage, loc. cit.
16 Barker, loc. cit., 398-99.
Blister's narrative, loc. cit., 55.
18 De Bemiere, loc. cit., 216.

10 Smith to R. Donkin, October 8, 1775, in Gage Papers.
20 Sutherland, op. cit., 18.
21 Smith to Donkin, loc. cit.

23 Barker, loc. cit., 398-99.

24 Sutherland to Gage, April 27, 1775, in Gage Papers.

25 Clarke, loc. cit.

26 Dorothy Quincy to Sumner, New England Historical and Genea-

logicd Regist er, VIII, 1881.

27 Ibid.

^Proceedings of the Lexington Historical Society, III, 91-93, orig-

inal orthography, capitalizing, punctuation, and emphasis pre-

served.

NOTES TO PART 5

^Proceedings of the Centennial of Concord Fight, 8 1 . *

2 John Winthrop, The History of New England, ed. James Savage,

I, 289.

8 Amos Barrett letters in Henry True, Journals and Letters, 3 1 .

278

NOTES

5 William Emerson, "Diary/ 3 facsimile in "The Literature of the

Nineteenth of April/ 3 appended to Proceedings at the Centennial

Celebration of Concord Fight, 163 ff.

6 Barrett, loc. cit., 31.

T Abiel Holmes, American Annals, II, 326.

8 Lemuel Shattuck, A History of the Town of Concord, 109.

9 Affidavit of Amos Baker., of Lincoln, appended to Robert Rantoul,

An Oration Delivered at Concord on the Celebration of the

Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Events of April 19, 1775.

10 Barker, loc. cit., 399.

n Shattuck, op. cit., in.

12 Barrett, loc. cit., 33.

13 Jeremy Lister, cited in Allen French, General Gage's Informers,

79-

14 Sutherland, op. cit., 20.

I5 Ibid.

16 Barker, loc. cit., 399.

17 Laurie, Report to Gage, in Gage Papers, William L. Clements

Library.

18 Barrett, loc. cit., 33.

19 Shattuck, op. cit., 112.

20 Barrett, loc. cit., 33.

21 Reverend William Gordon, Letter dated May 17, 1775, in

Force, 4th Series, II, 630.

NOTES TO PART 6

Barker, loc. cit., 400.

2 Dr. William Aspinwall, in Hudson, op. cit., 1, 182 n,

3 Emerson, loc. cit., 164 f.

4 Barrett, loc. cit., 33.

5 De Berniere, loc. cit., 2 1 7.

Sutherland, op. cit., 20, 22.

279

NOTES

7 The Reverend Edmund Foster to Colonel Daniel Shattuck, cited

in Ezra Bipley, History of the Fight at Concord, 23.

8 Mackenzie, op. cit., I, 26*

9 Foster, loc. tit., 23.

w The Essex Gazette, April 25, 1775.

n Lister, loc. cit., 112.

12 DeBerniere, loc. cit., 217.

18 Barker, loc. cit., 400.

^Letters of Hugh, Earl Percy, 54.

15 Mackenzie, op. cit., I, 29.

Detail and Conduct of the American War, 10.

18 Mackenzie, op. cit., I, 19.

19 Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 147.

20 Report to Gage, in Percy Letters, 50.

21 Dr. David McLure, "Diary," in First Series, Massachusetts His-

torical Society Proceedings, XVI, 158.

22 Mackenzie, op. cit., I, 19-20.

23 Heath, op. cit., 20.

25 Mackenzie, op. cit., 20-21.

26 The Reverend John Marrett to the Reverend Isaiah Dunster,

July 28,1775, in S. Dunster, Henry Dunster and His Descendants,

88-89.

^Columbia Centinel, February 6, 1 793.

28 L. R. Paige, History of Cambridge, 1630-1877, 413 n.

29 Cutler, History of Arlington, 69.

80 S. A. Smith, West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775,

34-

ai Anna Adams, in Christian Register, XXXIX, 169,

82 Mackenzie, op. cit., 21-22.

83 Rough draft copy of Percy's report to Gage in Percy Letters, 51 .

84 Letter of Pickering to Governor SulEvan, Massachusetts His-

torical Society.

280

NOTES

35 Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington, II, 407.

36 Heath, op. tit., 33.

37 Barker, loc. cit., 401.

* 8 Ibid.

39 Percy to General Harvey, in Percy Letters, 52-53.

NOTES TO PART j

1 Samuel Adams to Charles Thomson, June 1 7, 1774.
2 Lieutenant Colonel Smith's report to Gage, in First Series, Mas-
sachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, XIV, 350.
3 Cited in S. A. Drake, Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex,
356.

4 To William Eustis, later Governor of Massachusetts, in Richard
Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, 168.
5 Heath, op. cit. y 24.

6 Original in Dr. Warren's handwriting in Massachusetts Archives.
Emphasis added.

7 Dr. Warren to General Gage, April 20, 1775, Force, Archives,
4th Series, II, 370.

8 Force, Archives^ 4th Series, II, 360.

9 First Series, Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, VIII,
405.

10 Letter cited in the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser,
June 14, 1775.
^Lloyds, June 19-21, 1775.

12 Letter cited in Pennsylvania Journal, August 2, 1 775.
ls Essex Gazette, May 12, 1775.

u Harper*s Magazine, May 1875, cited in E. Chase, The Begin-
nings of the American Revolution, III, 30.
15 Joshua Coffin, History of Newbury, 245.

16 Alexander Scannell to John Sullivan in Force, Archives, 4th
Series, II, 501.

281

NOTES

17 Andover Muster Rolls, in Massachusetts Archives, XII, 136.
18 Letter of June 26, 1807, in Massachusetts Historical Society.
19 Thompson to Gage, May 6, 1775, in Gage Papers.
20 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety in Force,
Archives, 4th Series, II, 744.
21 Ibid.

22 Journal of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts., 671.
23 Bateman Deposition, Force, op. cit., 501.
^Journal of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, 673.
25 Revere to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, January i, 1798, in E. H. Goss,
The Life of Colonel Paul Revere, I, 208.
Ibid., 209.

27 A Narrative of the Excursion and Ravages of the King's Troops,
under the Command of General Gage, on the Nineteenth of April,
1775: Together with the Depositions Taken by Order of Congress
to Support the Truth of It. Printed by Isaiah Thomas, at Worces-
ter, May, 1775. It is in Journal of the Provincial Congress of
Massachusetts, 66 1.

28 Journal of Provincial Congress of Massachusetts -, 684 ff.
2Q Ibid.
Ibid., 677.

31 Cambridge Vital Records, II, 10, also in Lucius R. Paige,
Genealogical Register appended to History of Cambridge.
82 In Christian Register, XXXIX, 169.
8S In Force, Archives, 4th Series, II, 488.

34 The Reverend John Marrett to the Reverend Isaiah Dunster,
July 28, 1775, in S. Dunster, Henry Dunster and his Descendants,
88.

35 Handbill of the Salem Gazette.
m Massachusetts Spy, May 3, 1775.

8T Address to the Inhabitants in Force, Archives, 4th Series, II, 428.
88 Proceedings of the Provincial Congress in Force, Archives, 4th
Series, II, 488.
88 'Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, XXXVI, 19.

282

NOTES

^Correspondence of Thomas Gage, II, 673,
41 Gibbon to Hobroyd (Lord Sheffield) , May 30, 1 775.
42 Dartmouthto Gage, June i, 1775.
43 Gage memorandum to Admiral Graves, April 23, 1 775.
44 Gage to Dartmouth, April 22, 1775.
45 The London Press, June 12, 1775.
46 Dartmouth to Gage, July i, 1775.

^Speech on Moving Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colo-
nies, March 22, 1775, in Works, II, 101-82.

NOTES TO PART 8

1 Washington to John Augustine Washington, June 20, 1775, in
E* G. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of Continental Congress,

i, 138.

2 John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 1 7, 1 775, in Letters of John
Adams, Addressed to his Wife, 1, 45-46.
s The Works of John Adams, II, 406.

5 Hancock to the Committee of Safety, April 24, 1775, in William
V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, II, 296-

97-

6 Letter from Brown to Samuel Adams and Dr. Warren, March

29, 1775, appended to L. E. Chittendon, The Capture of Ticon-

deroga.

7 Gordon, History of the Rise, Progress and Establishment of the

Independence of the United States, I, 332 flf.

8 Silas Deane to Elizabeth Saltonstall Deane, May 7, 1775, in

Connecticut Historical Society Collections, II, 222.

g lbid., 223.

w The Works of John Adams, II, 406.

l:L Hancock to Dorothy Quincy, May 7, 1775, in New England

Historical and Genealogical Register, XIX, 135.

283

NOTES

12 Wells, op. cit., II, 300-1.
u The Works of John Adams, II, 406-7.

14 Dr. Joseph Warren to Samuel Adams, May 1 7, 1 775, in Richard
Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, 485.
Works of John Adams, II, 410.

17 Journals of the Continental Congress, 112.

u The Works of John Adams, III, 16.

19 Frothingham, op. cit. 3 485.

20 Cited in E. G. Burnett, The Continental Congress, 74.

21 Resolution of the Continental Congress, June 7, 1775, printed

in The Works of John Adams, III, 1 7.

22 Excerpt from the Diary of John Adams in Works, II, 415-16.

"

Ibid.

27 John Adams in Autobiography in Works, III, 1 8.

28 John Adams to Dr. J. Morse, January i, 1816, in Works, X, 197.

29 Jonas Clarke, "A Sermon Preached before His Excellency, John
Hancock/ 3 1781.

284

BIBLIOGRAPHT

A. DEPOSITIONS

The original depositions taken at the direction of the Second
Provincial Congress, were sworn to on April 23, 24, and 25, 1775,
in Lexington, in Concord, and in Charlestown. Twenty-one sepa-
rate documents were gathered and are now at the Library of
Harvard College and at the University of Virginia.

1 . Solomon Brown, Jonathan Loring, and Elijah Sanderson,
aU of Lexington

2. Elijah Sanderson (supplementary to the above)

3. Thomas Price Willard, of Lexington

4. Simon Winship, of Lexington

5. John Parker, of Lexington

6. John Robbins, of Lexington

7. Benjamin Tidd and Joseph Abbott, of Lexington

8. Nathaniel Mullekin,, Philip Russell, Moses Harrington,
Thomas and Daniel Harrington, William Grimer, William

287

BIB L IO GR AP H Y

Tidd, Isaac Hastings, Jonas Stone, Jr., James Wyman,
Thaddeus Harrington, John Chandler, Joshua Reed, Jr.,
Joseph Simonds, Phineas Smith, John Chandler, Jr.,
Reuben Lock, Joel Viles, Nathan Reed, Samuel Tidd,
Benjamin Lock, Thomas Winship, Simeon Snow, John
Smith, Moses Harrington, 3rd, Joshua Reed, Ebenezer
Parker, John Harrington, Enoch WiHington, John Hos-
mer, Isaac Green, Phineas Stearns, Isaac Durant, and
Thomas Headly, Jr., all of Lexington

9. Nathaniel Parkhurst, Jonas Parker, John Munroe, Jr.,
John Winship, Solomon Pierce, John Muzzy, Abner
Mead, John Bridge, Jr., Ebenezer Bowman, William
Munroe, 3rd, Micah Hagar, Samuel Sanderson, Samuel
Hastings, and James Brown, all of Lexington

10. Timothy Smith, of Lexington

1 1 . Levi Mead and Levi Harrington, both of Lexington

1 2 . William Draper, of Colrain

1 3. Thomas Fessenden, of Lexington

1 4. John Bateman, of the British Fifty-second Regiment

15. John Hoar, John Whitehead, Abraham Gaxfield, Ben-
jamin Munroe, Isaac Parks, William Hosmer, John
Adams, and Gregory Stone, all of Lincoln

1 6. Nathaniel Barrett, Jonathan Fairer, Joseph Butler,
Francis Wheeler, John Barrett, John Brown, Silas Walker,
Ephraim Melvin, Nathaniel Buttrick, Stephen Hosmer,
Jr., Samuel Barrett, Thomas Jones, Joseph Chandler,
Peter Wheeler, Nathan Peirce, and Edward Richardson,
all of Concord

17. Timothy Minot, Jr., of Concord

1 8. James Barrett, of Concord

19. Bradbury Robinson, Samuel Spring, and Thaddeus
Bancroft, all of Concord, and James Adams, of Lexington

20. James Marr, of the British Fourth Regiment

21. Edward Thornton Gould, of the King's Own Regiment

288

BIB LIO GR APH Y

These depositions were published in Force, American Archives,
4th Series, 11,487-50 1.

A separate set of depositions was taken in 1825, fifty years after
the event, from ten surviving witnesses or participants: Elijah
Sanderson, William Munroe, John Munroe, Ebenezer Munroe,
William Tidd, Nathan Munroe, Amos Lock, Joseph Underwood,
Abijah Harrington, and James Reed. These are the garrulous
recollections of old men, solicited to refute a claim advanced that
the first active resistance to the British took place at Concord rather
than at Lexington. It was in these depositions that the myth of
Captain Parker's directing his men to "stand your ground" had
its roots. They were first printed in Elias Phinney, History of the
Battle at Lexington, in 1825.

In 1827, two years later, in answer to Lexington's claims, four
new affidavits, by John Richardson, Samuel Hartwell, Robert
Douglass, and Sylvanus Wood, were published in Ezra Ripley,
History of the Fight at Concord, a contentious reply to Phinney.

In ^SS, Josiah Adams, a native of Acton, published, in his
address on the centennial of that town, six more depositions by
four Acton citizens : Thomas Thorp and Solomon Smith,, members
of Captain Isaac's company that led the fighting at Concord's
North Bridge; Charles Handley, a Concord spectator; and
Hannah Davis Leighton, Captain Davis' widow. All these later
depositions, made fifty to sixty years after the events, by aged
men in an atmosphere of inter-town feuds, must be used with
caution; but some of them add interesting and entirely plausible
detail.

B. OTHER CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS

Adams, John, is the major source on the second session of the
Continental Congress. His diary, autobiography, and correspond-
ence for the period are in Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works
of John Adams, 10 vols. Boston, 1850-56.

289

BIB LIO GR AP H Y

Baker, Amos, The Affidavit of, is an Appendix to Robert
Rantoul, Jr., An Oration Delivered at Concord on the Celebra-
tion of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Events of April ig,
i?75> Boston, 1 850.

Barker, Lieut. John, Diary, is a highly critical account by an
officer of the light infantry company of the King's Own Regiment.
It was published in the Atlantic Monthly, XXXIX, 389-401,
544-54, and in Elizabeth E. Dana, ed., The British in Boston,
Boston, 1924.

Barrett, Amos, "Concord and Lexington Battle," in Henry
True, Journals and Letters, Marion, Ohio, 1906, is a sprightly,
concise account by a provincial participant in the Concord battle.

Belknap, Dr. Jeremy, Journal of My Tour to the Camp, in First
Series, Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, IV, 77-86,
contains information gathered from personal interviews with
participants in the battle.

Clarke, Reverend Jonas, "Opening of the War of the Rev-
olution," an appendix to his anniversary sermon preached on
April 19, 1776, The Fate of Blood-thirsty Oppressors, and re-
printed by The Lexington Historical Society, 1901, is a brief,
reliable account but carefully phrased to intensify anti-British
feeling as the war moved into its second year.

De Beraiere, Henry, Narrative of Occurrences, 1775, is a
straightforward,, sober chronicle by an ensign of the British Tenth
Regiment, written in Boston in 1 776 and originally published there
in 1779; a* 80 * n Second Series, Massachusetts Historical Society
Collections, IV, 204 ff.

Emerson, Reverend William, Diary of April nineteenth, 1775? is
inserted as a manuscript facsimile in the back matter of Proceed-
ings of the Centennial Celebration of Concord Fight, Concord,
1876. Though he reported with the militia early in the morning,
Emerson stayed on the Concord side of the North Bridge during
the fight to protect his wife and children at the manse near the

290

BIB LIO GR APH Y

formation of the British. His diary account is reliable and in-
formative.

Gage, General Thomas, "A Circumstantial Account of an
Attack that Happened on the igth April, 1775," was originally
sent to the colonial governors to counteract the provincial propa-
ganda; it is published in Force, Archives, 4th Series, II, 435, and
in Second Series, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, II,
224 ff. This is Gage's fullest account, based on the reports that he
had from the field officers but full of unsubstantiated assumptions
about the first firing at Lexington. Gage's reports to the ministers at
London are in The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage
(New Haven: 1933) : to Lord Dartmouth, I, 396; to Lord Bar-
rington, II, 673. The letters are sparse and, of course, defensive.
Gage's manuscript papers are at Clements Library, University of
Michigan.

Gordon, Reverend William, "An Account of the Commence-
ment of Hostilities between Great Britain and America, in the
Province of Massachusetts Bay," was written May 17, 1775,
following the author's interviewing of participants, including the
British prisoners. Gordon, pastor of the Third Church at Roxbury
and also chaplain of the Provincial Congress, wrote his valuable
account in the form of "a letter to a gentleman in England" and
gave authority for all his statements. The letter is in Force,
Archives, 4th Series, II, 625 ff. Gordon's History of the Rise,
Progress and Establishment of the Independence of The United
States of America, 4 vols., was begun in 1776 and published in
London in 1788. It is partisan and unreliable.

Heath, General William, the first American general officer
on the scene, gives his own account in his Memoirs, Boston, 1798.
He was a field officer of indifferent ability, but his account is
simple, direct, and reflects his limited military insight. Heath's
papers are in Fifth Series, Massachusetts Historical Society
Collections, IV, and Sixth Series, IV and V.

Lister, Ensign Jeremy, of the British Tenth Regiment, wrote

291

BIB LIOGRAP H Y

an account of his experiences in 1 782, particularly valuable for the
fight at Concord. It was published with the title. Concord Fight,
Cambridge, 1931; and it is discussed carefully by Allen French
in General Gage's Informers, Ann Arbor, 1932.

Mackenzie, Lieutenant Frederick, of the Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Diary, was published in 2 vols., Cambridge, 1930. This is an ex-
cellent journal by an observant, sensible, and experienced officer.

McClure, Reverend David, "Diary," in First Series, Massachu-
setts Historical Society Proceedings, XVI, 155 ff. contains an
account of his interviews with participants, including British
wounded.

Percy, Hugh, Earl, Letters, published in Boston, 1902, and
edited by C. K. Bolton, contains his account of the retreat in an
official report to Gage and in two informal letters.

Pitcairn, Major John, gives a concise, direct report of the battle
at Lexington Common in his letter to Gage. It is printed in Gen-
eral Gage's Informers, 55 ff.

Pope, Richard, apparently a Boston loyalist volunteer who went
to Concord with Lord Percy's force, wrote an account, much of it
based on what he had heard from others. It was published, to-
gether with a long and valuable letter of Lieutenant William
Sutherland (q.v.) under the title Late News, Boston, 1927.

Quincy, Dorothy, gave her version of Hancock's stay at Lexing-
ton to General William H. Sumner in 1822; it was published in
New England Historical and Genealogical Register, VIII, 188.

Revere, Paul, left two excellent accounts of his activities on the
night of April eighteenth, 1775, The first was an unsworn deposi-
tion, probably written shortly after the event; the second, a letter,
expanding on the events, addressed to Jeremy Belknap, Secretary
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, was dated January I,
1798. It is in the First Series, Massachusetts Historical Society
Collections, V, 106 ff. and Proceedings, XVI, 371 ff. The deposi-
tion is in Goss, Life of Colonel Paul Revere, I, 1 80 ff .

Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Francis, wrote an official report to

292

BIB LIO GRAPHY

General Gage, printed in First Series, Massachusetts Historical
Society Proceedings, XIV, 350. Its value is limited by Smith's
propensity to be late everywhere. Allen French discovered a more
important letter from Smith to Major R. Donkin, dated October
8, 1775, in the Gage MSS., and discusses it in General Gage's
Informers, 61 ff.

Sutherland, Lieutenant William, an enterprising and responsible
officer, wrote a narrative letter to Sir Henry Clinton, April 26,
1775, and another to General Gage, the following day. The
former was published in Late News, and the latter in General
Gage's Informers.

G. LOCAL HISTORIES

Indispensable to the student of the American Revolution are the
local histories, most of them written by dedicated and industrious
town and city historians of the last century. Of widely varying
literary quality, sometimes of uneven scholarship, occasionally
rather over prideful and in some cases not too discriminating
between tradition and research, they nevertheless contain a wealth
of detail which would not otherwise be so conveniently available.
Among those listed here, Hudson's long history of Lexington,
despite its aggressive local pride, is particularly noteworthy, as
are Paige's Cambridge and Shattuck's Concord. Allen French's
wholly admirable and judicious work is in a category of excellence
by itself. Josiah Adams, Phinney and Ripley are argumentative
and defensive and must be used with care. The following local
histories were all of some value:

Adams, Josiah, Acton Centennial Address, Boston: 1835
Brown, Francis H., Epitaphs in the Old Burying-Grounds of

Lexington, Massachusetts, Lexington: 1905
Butler, Caleb, History of the Town of Groton, Boston: 1848
Drake, Samuel Adams, Historic Fields and Mansions of Mid-
dlesex, Boston: 1879

293

BIB LIOGR AP H Y

- , History of Middlesex County, Mass., 2 vols., Boston : 1 880
French, Allen, Day of Concord and Lexington, Boston : 1925
Green, S. A., Groton during the Revolution, Boston : 1 890
Hudson, Charles, History of the Town of Lexington, Massa-

chusetts, Boston: 1868 (revised and reprinted in two volumes

by the Lexington Historical Society in 1913, with an invaluable

genealogical register)
King, Daniel P., Address Commemorative of Seven Young Men of

Danvers, Salem: 1835

Lexington Historical Society, Proceedings, 4 vols., 1886-1912
Mann, Herman, Annals of Dedham, J)edham: 1847
Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, various series

- , Proceedings, various series (Significant items are noted
by author.)

Morison, Samuel Eliot, Three Centuries of Harvard, Cambridge :

Paige, Lucius R., History of Cambridge, Boston: 1877

Phillips, James Duncan, Salem in the Eighteenth Century, Boston :

1937
Phinney, Elias, History of the Battle at Lexington, Boston: 1825

Ripley, Ezra, A History of the Fight at Concord, on the igth of

April, 1775) Concord: 1827
Shattuck, Lemuel, History of the Town of Concord, Boston and

Concord -.1835

Smith, Frank, History of Dedham, Dedham : 1936
Smith, Samuel Abbott, West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of

April, 1775, Boston: 1864
Smith, S. F., History of Newton, Boston : 1 880
Sumner, William H., History of East Boston, Boston: 1858
Wheildon, William W., New Chapter in the History of the Con-

cord Fight: Groton Minutemen, Boston: 1885
Winsor, Justin, ed., Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols., Boston:

1881
Worthington, Erastus, History of Dedham, Boston: 1827

294

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harold Murdock's three skeptical papers on Concord and Lex-
ington were published under the title, The Nineteenth of April,
*77 5> Boston, 1923. Informed, critical, witty, the essays are of
immense value for the lines of inquiry that they suggest and for the
sprightly persistence with which Mr. Murdock tracked down some
of the atrocity myths both of which historical excursions were
highly important to this book*

D. BIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS

For the principal figures in this book, I have generally relied on
their own works and those of their contemporaries. There are no
biographies of the Lexington figures, although there are some
useful sketches in the Proceedings of the Lexington Historical
Society, already noted. For the Harvard teachers and clergy who
taught the Samuel Adams generation, Sibley's Harvard Graduates
and Josiah Quincy's History of Harvard, both noted below, are
necessary. John Adams is best revealed in his own Works and
Familiar Letters y noted below. There is no adequate general biog-
raphy, though Catherine D. Bowen's John Adams and the Amer-
ican Revolution is an interesting and careful reconstruction.
Samuel Adams is best treated in John C. Miller's Sam Adams,
Pioneer in Propaganda, which, however, has some omissions.
Ralph Harlow's study of Adams from the Freudian point of
view is not entirely successful. William V. Wells, Adams' grandson,
wrote a long biography, which omits some unfavorable episodes
but contains a great deal of reliable material not elsewhere avail-
able. J. K. Hosmer's briefer biography is good but uncritical. The
best Hancock biography is by Herbert S. Allan, who is careful,
thorough, and unprejudiced in his research but somewhat partisan
in his conclusions. The Dictionary of American Biography is, of
course, excellent for all the major Revolutionary figures.

295

BIB L IO GR AP H Y

Adams, Charles Francis, ed., The Works of John Adams with a

Life, 10 vols., Boston: 1856
, Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail

during the Revolution, New York: 1876
Allan, Herbert S., John Hancock, Patriot in Purple, New York:

1948

Armory, Thomas C., Life of James Sullivan, 2 vols., Boston: 1859
Arnold, Isaac, The Life of Benedict Arnold, Chicago: 1880
Bowen, Catherine D., John Adams and the American Revolution,

Boston: 1950

Bradford, Alden, Memoir of the Life and Writings of Rev. Jon-
athan Mayhew, D. D v Boston: 1838

Brown, Abram English, John Hancock, His Book, Boston: 1898
Carter, Clarence, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas

Gage with the Secretaries of State and with the War Office and

Treasury, 2 vols., New Haven: 1931-33

Chamberlain, Mellen, John Adams, The Statesman of The Amer-
ican Revolution, Bostou: 1884
Chinard, Gilbert, Honest John Adams, Boston: 1933
Gushing, Harry A., ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams, 4 vols.,

New York: 1904-8

Davol, Ralph, Two Men of Taunton, Taunton: 1912
Decker, Malcolm, Benedict Arnold, Tarrytown: 1932
Dictionary of American Biography, Allen Johnson and Dumas

Malone, eds. 21 vols., New York: 1928-37
Forbes, Esther, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, Boston :

1942
Freeman, Douglas S., George Washington, 5 vols., New York:

1948-52
Frotbingham, Richard, The Life and Times of Joseph Warren,

Boston: 1865

Goss, E. H., The Life of Colonel Paul Revere, 2 vols., Boston : 1 89 1
Harlow, Ralph V., Samuel Adams, Promoter of the American

Revolution, New York: 1923

296

BIB LIO GRAPH Y

Hffldrup, Robert L., Life and Times of Edmund Pendleton,

Chapel Hill: 1939

Holland, H. W., William Dawes and His Ride, Boston: 1878
Hosmer, James K., Samuel Adams, Boston: 1896
Knollenberg, Bernard, Washington and the Revolution, New

York: 1940

Lucas, Reginald, Lord North, 2 vols., London: 1913
Martyn, Charles, The Life of Artemas Ward, New York: 1921
Mays, David John, Edmund Pendleton, 2 vols.., Cambridge : 1 952
Miller, John C., Sam Adams, Pioneer in Propaganda, Boston:

1936
Nettels, Curtis P., George Washington and American Independ-

ence, Boston: 1951

Pell, John, Ethan Allen, Boston: 1939
Quincy, Josiah, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Junior,

Boston: 1825
- , The History of Harvard University (Vol. II for the

eighteenth century presidents and the Harvard clerics) , Cam-

bridge: 1840
Sears, Lorenzo, John Hancock, The Picturesque Patriot, Boston:

Shipton, Clifford K., Isaiah Thomas, Printer, Patriot and Philan-

thropist, Rochester: 1948
Sibley, John Langdon, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of

Harvard University, Cambridge: 1873-
Still6, Charles J., Life and Times of John Dickinson, Philadelphia :

1891

E. THE REVOLUTION: POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND
RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND

The number of provocative and valuable monographs on the
American Revolution is tremendous and growing. Only those with
a special relevance to the thesis of this book are listed here. Of

297

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Immeasurable value also have been various original documents,
especially some of the sermons of the New England clergy.

Adams, Randolph G., Political Ideas of the American Revolution)

Durham: 1922
Andrews, Charles McLean, "Conditions Leading to the Revolt

of the Colonies," in Selected Essays in Anglo-American Legal

History, Eoston: 1907

, The Colonial Period of American History, Durham 11922

, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution,

New Haven: 1924
Baldwin, Alice M., The New England Clergy and the American

Revolution, Durham: 1928
Clarke, Jonas, The Importance of Military Skill, Measures for

Defence and a Martial Spirit, in a Time of Peace, Boston: 1 768
, The Fate of Blood-thirsty Oppressors and God's Tender

Care of His Distressed People, A Sermon Preached at Lexington,

April 19, 1776, Boston: 1776
, A Sermon Preached before His Excellency, John Han-

cock, Boston: 1781
Greene, Evarts B., The Revolutionary Generation, 1765-1790,

New York: 1943
Holyoke, Edward, Integrity and Religion, Boston: 1736

, Obedience and Submission, Boston: 1737

Howard, George Elliott, Preliminaries of the American Revo-

lution, 1763-1 775,, New York: 1905
Humphreys, Edward F., Nationalism and Religion in America,

1774-17%, Boston: 1924
Jameson, J. Franklin, The American Revolution Considered as a

Social Movement, function: 1926
Kraus, Michael, Intercolonial Aspects of American Culture on

the Eve of the Revolution, New York: 1928
Lothrop, Samuel EL, History of the Church in Brattle Street,

Boston, Boston : 1851

298

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mayhew, Jonathan, The Snare Broken, A Thanksgiving Discourse

Preached at the Desire of the West Church in Boston, Boston :

1766
Moore, Frank, ed., Patriot Preachers of the American Revolution,

New York: 1862
Sprague, William B., Annals of the American Pulpit, New York:

185?
Thornton, J. W., ed., The Pulpit of the American Revolution,

Boston: 1860
Van Tyne, Claude Halstead, "Influence of the Clergy, and of

Religious and Sectarian Forces, on the American Revolution,"

in American Historical Review, XIX, 44-64
Weedon, William B., Economic and Social History of New Eng-

land, 2 vols., Boston : 1891

F. THE REVOLUTION: OTHER SPECIAL STUDIES

For the uses of the battle of Lexington for propaganda purposes
both in the colonies and in England and aspects of Massachusetts
history accounting for the local attitudes before and after the
nineteenth of April, 1775, other special studies have been stimu-
lating and valuable. Philip Davidson's study of propaganda and
the Revolution set for itself a rather ambitiously inclusive goal,
which makes an otherwise interesting work perhaps too general.
Such inquiries as Arthur M. Schlesinger'sPr#/ud to Independence
deal more manageably with individual aspects of the subject.

Adams, Brooks, The Emancipation of Massachusetts, Boston:

1887
Adams, Randolph G. 5 "New Light on the Boston Massacre/'

American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, V., 47 ff.
Alden, John Richard, General Gage in America, Baton Rouge:

1948

299

BIB LIO GR AP H Y

Beer, George Louis, The Commercial Policy of England toward

the American Colonies, New York: 1893

, British Colonial Policy, 175^-1 765,, New York: 1907

Brigham, Clarence L., History and Bibliography of American

Newspapers, 1690-1820, 2 vols., Worcester: 1947
Burnett, Edmund C., Letters of Members of the Continental

Co ngress, Washington : 192136

, The Continental Congress, New York: 1941

Clark, Dora M., British Opinion and the American Revolution,

New Haven: 1930
Coupland, R., American Revolution and the British Empire,

London: 1930
Cross, Arthur Lyon, The Anglican Episcopate and the American

Colonies, Cambridge : 1902
Gushing, Harry A., History of the Transition from Provincial to

Commonwealth Government in Massachusetts, New York:

1896
Davidson, Philip, Propaganda and the American Revolution,

Chapel Hill: 1941
Duniway, Clyde A., The Development of Freedom of the Press

in Massachusetts, Cambridge: 1906

Fisher, Sydney George, "The Legendary and Myth-Making Proc-
ess in Histories of the American Revolution," in American

Philosophical Society Proceedings, LI, 53-76
French, Allen, General Gage's Informers, Ann Arbor: 1932
Hinkhouse, Fred Junkin, The Preliminaries of the American

Revolution as Seen in the English Press, New York: 1926
Howe, Mark Antony De Wolfe, Boston Common, Scenes from

Four Centuries, Cambridge: 1910
Loring, James S., The Hundred Boston Orators Appointed by the

Municipal Authorities and Other Public Bodies, from 1770 to

1852, Boston: 1853
Mott, Frank Luther, "The Newspaper Coverage of Lexington

and Concord," in New England Quarterly, XVII, 489-505

300

BIB L IO GR AP H Y

Mowat, R. B., England in the Eighteenth Century, New York:

1933

Mullett, Charles F., Fundamental Law and the American Revo-
lution, 1 760-1 Jj6, New York: 1933

Scheide, J. H., "The Lexington Alarm," in American Antiquarian
Society Proceedings, L, 4979

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Prelude to Independence, the Newspaper
War on Britain, 1764-1776, New York: 1958

Tyler, Moses Coit, The Literary History of the American Revo-
lution, 1763-1783, 2 vols., New York : 1897

G. THE REVOLUTION: GENERAL WORKS

The best general history of the Revolution is still Trevelyan.
The best long history of the United States is Channing, and the
best short history is Morison and Commager, The Growth of the
American Republic. John C. Miller's two studies are excellent,
and so is Carl Becker's too brief The Eve of the Revolution. A
general bibliography of the Revolution is not attempted here, of
course, but the works listed provide the necessary framework in
which to consider the limited area of this book.

Becker, Carl, The Eve of the Revolution, New Haven: 1921

Carpenter, William Seal, The Development of American Political
Thought, Princeton: 1930

Channing, Edward, A History of the United States, 6 vols., New
York: 1905-25

Commager, Henry Steele, see Morison, S. E.

Curti, Merle, The Growth of American Thought, New York : 1 943

Force, Peter, ed., American Archives, 4th and 5th Series, 9 vols.,
Washington: 1837-53

Ford, Worthington Chauncey, et al., eds., Journals of the Conti-
nental Congress, 34 vols., Washington: 1904-37

Fortesque, Sir John W., History of the British Army, London:
1899-1929

301

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lancaster, Bruce, From Lexington to Liberty, New York: 1955
Lecky, William E. EL, The American Revolution, 1765-1783,

New York: 1898
Miller, John, Origins of the American Revolution, Boston: 1943

, The Triumph of Freedom, Boston: 1948

Montross, Lynn, Rag, Tag, and Bobtail: The Story of the Con-
tinental Army, 1 775-1783, New York: 1951
Morison, Samuel Eliot, and Commager, Henry Steele, The

Growth of the American Republic, 2 vols. Third Edition, New

York: 1942
Nevins, Allen, The American States During and After the Revo-

lution, New York: 1924
Osgood, H. L., The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century,

New York: 1924
Schlesinger, Arthur M., "The American Revolution" in NeW'

Viewpoints in American History, New York : 1928
Trevelyan, Sir George O., The American Revolution, 4 vols.,

New York: 1899-1907
Winsor, Justin, Narrative and Critical History of America, 8 vols.,

Boston: 1884-89

302

Index

Acton, 163, 165, 1 80

Adair, Lt. (British infantry ) 9 113

15

Adams, Hannah, 23132

Adams, John, 193, 214, 248, 249,
255, 258, 259, 260, 268; defends
British soldiers, 66; visits mili-
tia, 248; journey to Philadelphia,
248, 251, 252; program for Con-
tinental Congress, 256-57; on
instituting civil government,
260-61, 262; nominates Wash-
ington as commander in chief,
263-67

Adams, Deacon Joseph, 199, 231

Adams, Rebecca, 232

Adams, Samuel, 78, 85, 97, 99,
263, 265; quoted, 55, 65, 69, 1 1 1,
139, 207, 262; character and
background, 62, 63-76, 78-79,
*93, 256; at Jonas Clarke's, 62,
71, 75-79, in, 112-13; at First
Continental Congress, 63, 64;
political career before Lexing-
ton, 63-75, ?6> 79J and Boston
mobs, 65-66, 69, 71, 126; and
Hancock, 62, 65, 66-68, 69, 70,
73> 75. 76, 78, 79, 88, 92, 98,
no, iii, 140, 142, 158, 212,
248-53; and Provincial Con-
gress, 70, 72-74, 112, 193, 216;
and Lexington battle, 79, 124,
125, 126-27, 139; as possible
object of British search, 78, 93,
94, 98, 109, 139; escape from
Lexington, 111-12, 139, 193;

and Dr. Warren, 213-14, 216;
en route to Philadelphia, 224,
248-53; at Hartford, 249-51; at
opening of Second Continental
Congress, 254-55, 257, 258;
seconds nomination of Wash-
ington, 266
Adams, Susanna, 232
Alarm lists, 46, 48, 151, 153
Allen, Ethan, 250
Ancient and Honourable Artillery

(Boston), 190
Andrews, John, 218
Anglican clergy, 39, 40
Arlington, see Menotomy
Arnold, Benedict, 220-21, 250
Atrocity stories, 218-20, 230-33

Back Bay, Boston, 90, 92, 93, 98

Ballard, John, 91

Baltimore, 68

Barker, Lt. John (British in-
fantry), 89, 107, 129, 133, 138,
158, 160, 163, 164, 171, 178, 181,

202, 203

Barrett, Amos (Concord minute-
man), 152, 165, 1 66, 177

Barrett, Col. James (Concord
minuteman), 153, 154, 155, 161,
163-64, 1 68

Barrett, Mrs, James, 157

Barrett, Samuel, of Concord, 158

Barrett, Deacon Thomas, of Con-
cord, 158

Barrington, Viscount, (William
Wildman), 236

303

INDEX

Bateman, John, British private,
129, 226

Beaton, John, of Concord, 175

Bedford, 32, 36, 163, 176, 178, 180

Bedford, Grosvenor, 38

Bernard, Gov. Sir Francis, 190

Beverly, 219

Billerica, 140, 174, 176, 248

Black Horse Tavern, 194

Bliss, Daniel (Concord loyalist),
149-50

Bond, Joshua, of Lexington, 189

Boston, 19, 20-21, 44-45, 50-51,
59-62, 63, 65-66, 68-69, 70,
71-72, 75, 76, 77, 78-79, 85-88,
90-92, 98, 105-6, 140, 158, 167,
181-85, 196, 198, 200-4, 210,
212-15, 219, 221-23, 227, 234,
240, 247, 255, 256, 260, 267

"Boston Journal of Occurrences,"
68

Boston Massacre, 66, 69, 76, 193,
214, 251

Boston Neck, 51, 92-96, 182, 183,
221

Boston Port Bill, 69, 87, 214

Boston Tea Party, 69, 78, 198

Bowes, Lucy, see Mrs. Jonas
Clarke

Bowman, Thaddeus (Lexington
minuteman), 116, 126

Braintree, 60

Brattle Street Church, Boston, 76

Brighton, 200, 217

Brooks, Dr. John (Reading min-
uteman), 176-77

Brown, Capt. (British infantry),
88, 89, 92, 149

Brown, Sgt Francis (Lexington
minuteman), 49

Brown, John, 135

Brown, John, of Pittsfield, 249, 250

Brown, Reuben, (Concord minute-
man), 175

Brown, Solomon, (Lexington min-
uteman), 97, 98, 102, 135-36

Brown, Capt. Timothy, of Con-
cord, 165

Buckman's Tavern, 32, 50, 57, 77,
98, 100, 109, ill, 115, 116, 117,
125, 128, 131, 134, 135, 137

Bunker's Hill, 133, 202, 268, 269

Burke, Edmund, 241

Buttrick, Maj. John, (Concord
minuteman), 152, 153, 163-64,
165

Calvin, John, 31

Calvinism, 38, 39, 41

Cambridge, 50, 92, 108, 109, 158,
184-85, 191, 199, 203, 215, 216,
220-23, 228, 230, 231, 232, 247,
257, 260, 263, 265, 267

Canada, 73, 249, 250, 257

Carleton, Guy, 250

Carlisle, 163

Gary, Rev. Thomas, 219-20

Castleton, Vermont, 250

Charles River, 30, 78, 89, 92-94,
106-7, I ^4j 200-1, 210, 221

Charleston, S.C., 68

Charlestown, 92, 94-96, 174, 194,

2OI, 202, 204, 210, 219, 221,
229, 231, 240

Champlain, Lake, 34, 249

Chauncey, Rev. Charles, 41

Chelmsford, 163

Childs, Abijah (Lexington minute-
man), 59

Church, Dr. Benjamin, 51, 74, 87,
88, 227-30, 259

Church of Christ, Lexington, 40,

57

Church of England, 40, 41, 45, 254
Clarke, Elizabeth, 141-43

304

INDEX

Clarke, Rev. Jonas, 51, 62, 75, 76,
77> 79 97, 99, o, 1545 270;
character, 34-36; as pastor at
Lexington, 34, 35, 39-40, 41, 57;
as political theorist, 36, 38, 41,
42-45, 46, 57, 59 j influence in
Lexington, 35-36, 46, 71, 79, 98,
in, 112-13, 150, 269; family,
3 6 > 58-599 141, 142; and Lex-
ington battle, 124, 125, 128, 132,
139, 142

Clarke, Mrs. Jonas, 36, 59

Coercive Acts, of 1774, 45, 63

Comee, Joseph (Lexington min-
uteman), 131, 136, 138

Committees of Correspondence,
44> 78, 217

Committees of Safety, 48, 51, 59,
62, 70, 72, 79, 91, 92, 94-95, 96,
108, in, 190, 191, 194, 215, 221,
222-24, 227, 236, 249, 250, 264

Committees of Supplies, 74, 96,
215

Conant, Col, William, 92, 94

Concord, 20, 106, 174-75, 176,
204, 212, 218, 225-27, 231, 247;
description, 88, 49-51, 152-53;
Provincial Congress meetings,
51, 62, 65, 71-74, 224, 255;
stores at, 79, 87, 88-89, 9*-9*>
94, 103, 115, 123, 131, 151-52,
154, 228; British raid, 151-68,
203; battle at North Bridge,
159-66, 175, 182, 185, 226, 229

Concord River, 115, 154, 155

Connecticut, 39, 73, 220, 233, 249,
250, 252

Continental Congress, First, 51, 63,
65, 70, 7*> 75> 125, 255

Continental Congress, Second, 247,
259-67; meets in Philadelphia,
75, 212, 220, 248, 251, 257; and
Samuel Adams, 75, 254-55; and

program of John Adams, 256-
57; considers efforts at recon-
ciliation, 258; responds to Mas-
sachusetts petition, 262-63; be-
comes central colonial authority,
263; elects Washington, as com-
mander in chief, 267

Cooke, Rev. Samuel, 199, 232

Cooper, Benjamin, 197, 232

Cooper, Rachel, 197

Cooper, Rev. Samuel, 76

Crown Point, N. Y., 257

Cuming, Dr. John, of Concord,
174

Gushing, Thomas, 248, 249, 251,
264, 266-67

Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., quoted,

27

Danvers, 174, 197, 219
Dartmouth, Earl (William

Legge), 87, 88, 90, 236, 237,

238-39

Davis, Deacon Caleb, 228

Davis, Capt. Isaac (Acton min-
uteman), 163, 165

Dawes, William, 91, 92-96, 100-1,
no, 113, 183

De Berniere, Ensign Henry (Brit-
ish infantry), 88, 89, 92, 129,
131, 133, 149, 177, 180

Declaration of Independence, 41

Dedham, 174

Derby, John, 236-37, 238, 239

Derby, Richard, 236

Devens, Richard, 94, 95, 96

Diamond, William (Lexington
drummer), 19, 20, 23, 29, 48,
109, 113, 1 1 6, 126, 140, 143,
173, 267, 268

Dickinson, John, 258

Dorr, Ebenezer, 96

Downer, Dr. Eliphalet, 197

305

INDEX

East Sudbury, 177
Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, 39
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quoted,

147
Emerson, Rev. William (Concord

pastor), 151, 154, 1 66, 175
Endicott, Gov. John, 150
Episcopate, issue of, 40-41, 68
Essex County, 201, 220
Eustis, Dr. William, 194

Fairfield, Conn., 251, 252, 258
Fifty-second British Regiment,

129, 226
First Brigade (British), 181, 182,

184, 186
Fiske, Dr. Joseph, of Lexington,

30, 33, 140
Forty-third Regiment (British),

160, 161, 176
Forty-seventh Regiment (British),

i8 9

Foster, Rev. Edmund (Bedford

minuteman), 178-79
Fourth Regiment (British), 161,

189, 226

Framingham, 174, 177
France, 37, 237, 256, 269
Franklin, Benjamin, 35, 210, 236,

237, 238, 240
Fraunces Tauern, 253
French and Indian wars, 19, 22, 23,

34> 3^, 37> 47> 60, 124, 249,

250, 264

Gage, Gen. Thomas, 46, 48, 50-51,
% 3 70, li, 72, 73, 75> 78, 79,
86 > 9i, 92, 9 6 > 97* 99> 107, 149,
l6 7> *75> 217, 249, 262; as com-
mander in Boston, 21, 69, 85-91,
93 94> 97> 102-6, 115, 189, 210,
211, 225, 228, 247, 256; in-
formers, 51, 74, 87, 88, 227-28,

259; instructions to Smith, 90,
103-4, IIJ *, 115, 154, 156; on
eve of battle, 90, 181; sends re-
lief force to Concord, 181-83;
besieged, 221, 223; reports to
England, 235, 236, 238, 239-40

Gardner, Henry, Treasurer of Pro-
vincial Congress, 156-57

General Court of Mass., 33, 34,
36, 42, 46, 48, 65, 66, 85

Gentleman's Magazine > 238

George III, 21, 197

George, Lake, 249, 251

Georgia, 233

Georgia Gazette, 233

Gerry, Elbridge, 96-97, 108

Gould, Lt. Edward (British in-
fantry), 129, 176, 185, 186, 226

Great Awakening, 40, 150

Great Britain, 37, 38, 45, 63, 64,
6 9> 73> 1*6, 224, 233, 234-35,
240, 241, 256

Green Mountain Boys, 250

Grenville, George, 37, 38, 42, 43

Hadley, Samuel (Lexington min-

uteman), 130, 135, 268
Hancock, Rev. Ebenezer, 59, 60
Hancock, Rev. John, 32-33, 34, 35,
36, 40, 41, 50, 57, 59, 150-51,
270

Hancock, Mrs. John (elder), 58
Hancock, Rev. John, Jr., 59-60,

141

Hancock, John, 59, 71, 97, 200,
263, 264; character and back-
ground, 60-62, 67, 112, 139,
I 93J a t Jonas Clarke's, 59, 62,
75~79> 99 ** 2 ; political career
before Lexington, 65, 66-67, 70,
76, 79; and Samuel Adams, 62,
65, 66-68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 76,

306

INDEX

78, 79> 88, 92, 98, i io, in,
140, 142, 158, 212, 248-53; and
Provincial Congress, 70, 73, 79,
112, 215; and Lexington battle,
124, 125, 139, 140; as treasurer
of Harvard, 61, 77; and fiancee,
76, 139-40, 258; as possible ob-
ject of British search, 78, 93, 94,
98, 109, 139; escape from Lex-
ington, 111-12, 139, 193; en
route to Philadelphia, 224, 248-
53; at Worcester, 249; at Hart-
ford, 249-51; on New York re-
ception, 252-53; elected Presi-
dent of Continental Congress,
258-59, 260; disappointment at
Washington's nomination, 266

Hancock, Thomas, 60, 61

Hancock, Mrs. Thomas (Lydia),
61, 75-76, 98, 1 10, in, 139,
140, 141, 248, 249, 250, 251

Harrington, Caleb (Lexington
minuteman), 130, 136

Harrington, Daniel (Lexington
minuteman), 49, 109, 128

Harrington, David, of Lexington,
128

Harrington Family, of Lexington,

29
Harrington, Jonathan (Lexington

minuteman), 29, 128, 130, 135,

136, 268
Harrington, Moses, (Lexington

minuteman), 130
Harrington, Ruth Fiske, 135, 268
Harvard College, 32, 34, 41, 58,

59> 61, 77, 184, 185, 201, 212,

220

Haynes, Deacon Josiah (Sudbury

militia), 160, 219, 221
Heath, Maj. Gen. William, 190-

92, 194-95, 200, 2OI, 202, 220

Hayward, James (Acton minute-
man), 1 80

Henry, Patrick, 263

Hicks, John, 198, 199

Holyoke, Edward, Pres. of Har-
vard, 35, 41, 42, 212

Hosmer, Joseph (Concord minute-
man), 161

Hubbard, Ebenezer, of Concord,
156

Hutchinson, Gov. Thomas, 237

Hull, Lt. (British infantry), 176,
185, 186

Independent Corps of Cadets, 61,

no

Ipswich alarm, 21920
Isle of Wight, 237, 239

Jefferson, Thomas, 35

Jones, Ephraim, of Concord, 156

Judaism, 39

King's Bench Prison, 238
King's Bridge, N. Y., 252
King's Own Regiment, 107, 129,
133, 160, 163, 176, 179, 185,

203, 226

Langdon, Samuel, Pres. of Har-
vard, 77

LarMn, Deacon John, 95, 99, 101,
102

Laurie, Capt. Walter (British
infantry), 160, 161, 162, 163,
164, 165

Lee, Arthur, 72, 236, 237, 238, 240

Lee, Charles, 96, 108

Lexington, 19-23, 29-52, 71, 75,
78, 93~ I02 3 108-17, 152, 201,

204, 212, 228, 231, 234, 237,
247, 248, 251, 253, 254, 263,
268, 270; description, 29-34,

37

INDEX

127-28, 149, 150, 151; political
resolutions, 38, 44-46; military
organization, 22, 46, 47-50;
mustering, 20, 50, 100, 109,
112, 113, 116, 123, 124, 141,
143, 267; battle in morning,
124-43, 224; battle in after-
noon, 181, 187-88, 203; British
return to, 175, 177, 178, 180-
81, 186, 210; Percy's forces at,
181-82, 186-90; retreat through,
1 80-8 1, 186-90; depositions,
225-27, 257

Lexington Common, 19-23, 32,
127-28, 130-39, 140, 141, 143,
159, 173-74. J 75> 180-81, 186-
87, 190, 194, 211, 219, 226, 230,
267, 268

Lincoln, 151, 152, 160, 163, 177,
178

Lister, Ensign Jeremy (British in-
fantry), 107, 133, 161, 162, 164,
165

Locke Family, of Lexington, 29

Locke, John, 35, 41

London, 37, 38, 40, 43, 60, 65, 72,
74, 75, 87, 182, 213, 236-39,
247. 255, 257

London Evening Post, 237

London Press, 240

Loring, Jonathan (Lexington min-
uteman), 98, 102

Louisburg, 22, 34* 4, 49> *34

Lowell, John, 77, in, 117, 129

Loyalists, 50, 65, 66, 71, 72, 85,

87, 105, 114, 149-50, 181, 210,
213

Mackenzie, Lt. Frederick (British
infantry), 90, 106, 182-83, 187-

88, 196, 199-200
Magna Gharta, 44

Marblehead, 72, 202
Marcy, William, 198, 199, 202
Maryland, 233, 257, 267
Massachusetts Spy, 234
Mather, Cotton, 31, 212
Mayhew, Rev. Jonathan, 41, 42
Medford, 45, 174, 186, 197, 226
Menotomy (Arlington), 92, 95, 96,

97, 108, 185, 186, 190, 191, 194,

196, 197, 199, 202, 212
Meriam's Corner, 176, 177
Middlesex County, 19, 21, 124,

134, 166, 174, 181, 249
Militia, organization of provincial,

46-47, 48, 71, 73, 88, 163, 168
Minot, Dr. Timothy, of Concord,

*74> 175
Minutemen, as militia group, 22,

46, 48, 50, 71, 79, 100, 109,

124-25, 152, 153, 154, 163,

166, 168, 177, 179, 192
Mitchell, Maj. (British Infantry),

101-2, 114
Mulliken, Lydia, 100, 188, 268-

69
Mulliken, Nathaniel, (Lexington

minuteman), 100, 188, 269
Munroe, Abraham, of Lexington,

4 8

Munroe, Ebenezer, (Lexington

minuteman), 134
Munroe, Edmund, (Lexington

minuteman), 34, 47, 268
Munroe Family, of Lexington, 29,

47

Munroe, Jedediah (Lexington
minuteman), 130, 134, 143, 173,
1 80

Munroe, John (Lexington minute-
man), 49, 134-35

Munroe, Marrett, of Lexington,
128, 136

308

IND EX

Munroe, Nathan (Lexington min-
uteman), 128

Munroe, Robert, of Lexington, 47,
49

Munroe, Ensign Robert (Lexing-
ton minuteman), 130, 134, 135

Munroe, Sgt. William (Lexington
minuteman), 20, 49, 97, 99,
108-9, i, *I2, 113, 126, 128,
129, 135. 139, 1 86

Munroe's Tavern, 49, 97, 100, 186,
187, 188, 189

Muzzy, Isaac (Lexington minute-
man), 130, 135

Muzzy, John (Lexington minute-
man), 130

Muzzy's Tavern, 32

Mystic River 9 30, 201

New Hampshire, 73, 220, 268
New Hampshire Grants, 250
New York, 40, 78, 233, 234, 249,

250, 251-53, 254, 257, 268
Newell Tavern, 108

North Bridge (over Concord
River), 154, 155, 159, 175, 182,
185, 226, 230

North Church, Boston, 92, 94

North, Lord (Frederick), 45, 70,
224, 235, 237, 240-41

Northumberland, Duke of, 181

Old South Meetinghouse, Boston,

193

Orne, Azor, 96, 108
Otis, James, 68

Paine, Robert Treat, 248, 249,

251, 264, 266-67

Parker, Cpl. Ebenezer (Lexington

minuteman), 49
Parker Family, of Lexington, 29,

30, 31, 32, 34, 50

Parker, John, Capt (Lexington
minuteman), 19-23, 29-34, 3$,
47-52, 100, 109, in, 112-13,
116, 123-27, 128, 129-30, 131,
143, 173, *77> 186, 203, 218,
225, 230, 267-68

Parker, Jonas (Lexington minute-
man), 29, 130, 132, 135

Parker, Jonas, Jr. (Lexington min-
uteman), 29, 130

Parker, Josiah, of Lexington, 34,
47

Parliament British, 36, 41-45, 49,
51, 64, 66, 69, 72-73, 58, 238,
262

Parsons, Capt. (British infantry),
159-^0, 161, 162-63, 1 66, 167,
*75> 230

Pendleton, Edmund, 264-65, 266

Percy, Hugh, Earl, 91, 92, 102,
181, 182, 184-90, 191, 192, 193,
*94> 195-97, 200-1, 203-4, 209,

210, 212, 229, 231, 240

Philadelphia, 38, 63, 64, 68, 75,

77, 112, 212, 214, 224, 248, 249,

254, 255, 257, 258, 259, 263,
267

Phipp's Farm, 228, 230

Pickering, Col. Timothy, 201-2,
222

Pitcairn, Maj. John (Royal Ma-
rines), 105, 114, 115, 127, 129,
131-34, 136, 138, 154, 155, 156-
57, 174, 175, 179, 183, 186, 195,
231, 232

Pittsfield, 249

Prescott, Dr. Samuel, 100-1, no,
151, 188, 268-69

Prince Estabrook (Lexington
slave-minuteman), 50, 130, 268

Propaganda, in the colonies, 68,

211, 212-21, 224-34; i* 1 Great

309

INDEX

Britain, 68, 224, 231, 232, 234-
41

Provincial Congress, 34, 51, 57, 59,
69, 70, 85, 87, 88, in, 112, 125,
156, 190, 194, 215, 216, 220,
247; establishment, 46, 193;
legal status, 46, 48, 247; Con-
cord sessions, 62, 65, 71-74, 75,
126, 216, 224, 255; session at
Watertown, 224, 249, 259;
orders depositions taken, 225,
231? 232; sends dispatches to
London, 236-41; petitions Con-
tinental Congress, 257, 259-63;
sends messenger to Philadelphia,

259
Puritanism, 31, 33, 38, 39, 40, 41,

45, i5> J 57> 2 54
Putnam, Israel, 179, 220, 254

Quakers, 237, 255

Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 255

Quincy, Dorothy, 75-76, 99, no,

in, 125, 139-4, 141,248,249,

250, 251, 252, 258
QuerOj Salem schooner, 236, 237,

239

Raymond, John (Lexington min-

uteman), 180
Reading, 174, 176
Reed Family, of Lexington, 29
Revere, Paul, 78, 79, 89, 91, 92,
93, 94> 95, 96, 98, 99, 100-2,
108, 109, no, 111-14, 117, 129,
136, 158, 194, 228, 268; quoted,
78, 83, 92, 94, 95, 99, 101-2,
108, 117, 227

Richardson, Moses, 198, 199
Rogers' Rangers, 19, 34, 47, 268
Roxbury, 96, 190, 212, 221
Royal Artillery, 181
Royal Marines, 189

Royal Welch Fusiliers, 90, 182,

187, 189
Russell, Jason, 198, 199

Salem, 201, 202, 222, 236, 239

Salem Gazette, 236, 237, 238

Sanderson, Elijah (Lexington min-
uteman), 98, 102

Sherman, Roger, 266

Simonds, Ensign Joseph (Lexing-
ton minuteman) , 49

Simonds, Joshua (Lexington min-
uteman), 136, 137

Slavery in Massachusetts, 50

Smith, Lt. Col. Francis (British
infantry), 90, 91, 103-5, Io6 >
107, 112, 113, 115, 137-38, I53 ?
154-55, J 59, 162, 163, 165-66,
167, 174, 175, 179, 181, 182,
183, 184, 1 86, 1 88, 190, 193,
195, 203, 210, 228-29, 230, 231,
240

Society for Supporting the Bill of
Rights, 238

Somerset, British man-of-war, 94,
201, 202

South Bridge (over Concord
River), 155

Southampton, England, 237, 238,

239

Spain, 37, 256
Stamp Act, 42-43, 63, 65, 66, 158,

212
State House (Pa.) 257, 259, 264,

265

Stone, Isaac, of Lexington, 32
Stone, Jonas, of Lexington, 34, 36,

4 6

Stone, Samuel, of Lexington, 3 1
Sudbury, 160, 174, 219
Suffolk County, 174, 190
Sukey, British packet, 236, 239

310

INDEX

Sutherland, Lt. William (British
infantry) , 107, 113-15, 116, 131,
133-34, J 37> l6 2, 164, 165, 178

Taunton, 248, 251

Tenth British Regiment, 105, 106-

7> i37 ? *59> l61
Ticonderoga, 249-50, 257
Tidd Family, of Lexington, 29
Tidd, Lt. William (Lexington min-

uteman) 9 49, 136
Tories, see Loyalists
Trumbull, Gov. Jonathan, 249,

250

Viles, Cpl. Joel (Lexington min-

uteman) , 49
Virginia, 254, 258, 263, 264, 266,

268
Virginia Gazette (Dixon and

Hunter's), 233

Walpole, Horace, 38

Ward, Gen. Artemas, 215, 220,
221, 224, 254, 264, 266, 267

Warren, Dr. Joseph, 75, 89, 98, 99,
100, 109, 269; in Boston, 72, 78,
91, 92, 93, 94, 113, 214; at Lex-
ington, 191, 193, 194; during
British retreat, 191, 193, 194,
197; character, 193-94, 212-13,
217; political career, 193-94,
212-15; leads provincial civil

government, 215-17, 218, 221-
40, 262; as propagandist, 212-
21, 224, 234-35, 240; letter to
the British people, 231, 232, 235,
240; petition to Continental
Congress, 259

Washington, George, 168, 202,
245, 264-67

Watertown, 92, 191, 224, 262

Welch Fusiliers, 159

Wellington, Benjamin (Lexington
minuteman), 115

West Church, Boston, 42

Wheeler, Timothy, of Concord,

155-56
White, Sgt. Ebenezer (Lexington

minuteman), 49
Whitefield, Rev. George, 150
Whittemore, Samuel, 197-98, 232
Wilkes, John, 237
Wilson, Capt. Jonathan (Bedford

minuteman ) , 1 79-80
Winship, Jason, 197-98, 232
Woburn, 135, 139, 140, 141, 142,

248

Wood, Amos, of Concord, 157
Wood, Sylvanus, 20
Worcester, 93, 234, 249
Wright's Tavern, 151, 174
Wyman, Jabez, 197-98, 232, 248

Yale College, 39, 105

the, pnff,
ovar the. C
~&ut

into Chctr\

HARRINGTON HOUSE

MERJAM'S
W Concord ^ ..... CORNER

(Continued from frcmt flap)

: Here are the dedicated patriots whose
patient, canny strategy goaded and
guided their fellow colonists into a Rev-
olutionary frame of mind in perhaps the
most decisive battle for public opinion
in all American history: Sam Adams
the crafty, shabbily dressed Boston poli-
tician who planted and nurtured the first
small seeds of rebellion; "Bishop" John
Hancock whose "enlightened Puritan-
ism" inspired a passionate love of liberty
in his Lexington parishioners and, by
contrast, his frivolous, egotistical grand-
son John whose ornate signature
adorns the Declaration of Independence;
Jonas Clarke also of Lexington, who
combined politics and theology with
brilliant success; Joseph Warren the
jl^oung Boston physician and great Rev-
olutionary publicist, who pressed the
public-opinion battle right into the heart
jof London; and John Adamsthe disci-
jgjised intellectual who engineered the
Appointment of Washington and the
transformation of village militia into a
continental army.

The- dramatic, minute-by-minute ac-
count of the famous battles at Lexing-
ton and Concord, WILLIAM DIAMOND'S
DKUAJ is history at its most exciting-
history in which the influences that
shaped men's minds are carefully ana-
lyzed. Using contemporary letters,
liaries, and eyewitness accounts, the
tells the political, social, and,
u,.jj>ve all, the human story of a revolu-
I" Ai's beginnings when a young drum-
\er boy called his young country
:o arms.

JACKET PAINTING BY ALICE SMITH

Printed in the U.S.A.

II ! I W'" 11 * 1 I ""~ p

132768